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HOME LIFE liN AMERICA 



I 







BROAD STREET, NEW YORK 



HOME LIFE IN 
AMERICA 



BY 

KATHERINE G. BUSBEY 



WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1910 



PREFACE 

IN presenting these phases of America I have tried 
to let conscience rule pride in my conception of 
patriotism, but as a New England conscience has 
been defined as "nine-tenths bad liver," the view of 
national life I have given may be condemned as " spleenish." 

There is as great difficulty in writing with any 
degree of objectivity, let alone as an impressionist, about 
one's own country as there is in conceiving your daily-met 
circle of faces through an impressionalistic blur. It is 
difficult to give stimulating colour, and to limn super- 
ficially when well-known details draw the hand to critical 
judgment. But I hope if what I have written seems less 
vivid in colour, less startling in form than is gratifying to 
those who look to America for sensational conditions, it 
will be granted that it is a sacrifice of the picturesque 
to verisimilitude. 

An artist knows instinctively how many details may 
be obliterated, and his treatment made more direct and 
convincing thereby. If circumscribed ability has made 
this picture of American home life more the work of a 
photographer than an artist, it is only to be hoped that 
in the interest of truth I have not left too many lines in the 
face of Uncle Sam. 

Some of the comment is familiar, some of the anecdote 
may leave a reminiscent twang, but with all the books 
being written on America just now, to be strikingly 



vi HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

original would be to write in a lighter and more strident 
strain than the American Eagle's scream in our nation's 
early self-consciousness. 

The scream of the eagle is still heard now and then, 
but as a nation we no longer hang upon the accents of that 
rather self-centred bird. 

No doubt the " muck-rakers " have done something to 
tone down our triumphant " yawp." 

American home life has no superlative virtues and no 
original sins. It is only in the little things that it differs 
from that of other nations, but — it is, after all, the little 
things of life that mean so much. 

It is hoped, as herein set forth, they may be found not 
uninteresting. 

K. G. B. 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

PREFACE V 

I. IN GENERAL . . " * 

II. THE AMERICAN CHILD 25 

III. SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES ... 48 

IV. TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 7- 

^ V. THE AMERICAN WOMAN lOI 

VI. HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 1 27 

VII. SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 147 

VIII. THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 173 

IX. LIFE AT WASHINGTON I92 

X. AMERICAN WAYS 2I9 

XI. HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 246 

XII. THE WEST AT HOME 273 

XIII. THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 29S 

XIV. SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 321 

XV. HOUSING THE NATION 349 

XVI. A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS . . . -378 

INDEX 405 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Broad Street, New York Fro7itispiece 

From a Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 

FACING 
PAGE 

President Taft opening the Base-ball Season by 

TOSSING the First Ball in a Match at Washington 33 

From a Photograph by Clinedinst, Washington. 

A Negro School: the Music Lesson 67 

From a Photograph supplied by the London Electrotype Agency, 
Ltd. 

Broadway on a Wet Night 99 

From a Photograph supplied by the London Electrotype Agency, 
Ltd. 

The Bowery, Np:w York, showing the Elevated Rail- 
way 132 

From a Photograph by UNDERWOOD & Underwood, New York. 

A Common Object in the Country : the Travelling 
Butcher on his Rounds 164 



The House of Representatives, Washington . . .199 

From a Photograph by HARRIS & EwiNG, Washington. 

A Typical American Porch 231 

A "Header" at Work in California 265 

From a Photograph supplied bv the London Electrotype Agency. 
Ltd. 

ix 



HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



FACING 
PAGE 



A School Drill at Cincinnati 297 

From a Photograph supplied by the London Electrotype Agency, 
Ltd. 



A Street Basin in Cincinnati 331 

From a Photograph supplied by the London Electrotype Agency, 
Ltd. 

A Tenement District of New York 363 

From a Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, New York. 



HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



CHAPTER I 
IN GENERAL 

A FEW years ago, on a first trip through their West, a 
party of American tourists from Eastern States 
were commenting upon the relief of leaving behind 
the foreign population deluging their homes. They had 
reached the Mammoth Springs Hotel, the first in that 
chain of surprising hostelries through the Yellowstone 
National Park, and had found that the waiters were 
college students from State universities working for funds 
for the next winter term ; the desk clerk was a health- 
seeking easterner ; the manager's parents had come West 
in one of the gold rushes — everybody about the hotel was 
•'pure American." 

After dinner the easterners sat on the hotel porch and 
looked more admiringly at Fort Yellowstone, that symbol 
of the American army within a stone's throw of the hotel, 
than at the steaming multi-coloured terrace of the geysers 
they had come to this nature's wonderland to see. Some of 
the officers from the garrison came up to call. They were 
West Point graduates — also representatively American. 
The tourists experienced a rush of patriotism to the heart. 
" Life may be rough, but blood is pure out here on the 
frontier," affirmed the epigram-maker of the party. Next 
morning their belief in this promised land of pure Ameri- 
canism seethed again as they arose to reveille, and saw the 

B I 



2 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Stars and Stripes over the parade ground and found the 
driver with whom we were to tour the Park to be an old 
mail-coach pilot, ** American through to his hip-pocket load 
of six-shooter and tobacco plug," as the epigrammatist said. 
But one of the party had developed a sore throat, and 
a trip to the garrison dispensary had to be made before 
starting. The first sentry of whom directions were asked 
replied, " Yer'U be afther follerin' this yer booard walk to 
the building foreninst the barricks, ind 'tis beyondt that 
ver'll find it." " Irish, in our uniform, too ! " gasped the 
Boston man, shades of the Celtic political bossism in 
his own city arising unpleasantly. The next soldier 
encountered spoke English as it is broken over the Nor- 
wegian tongue ; the uniformed gentleman who opened 
the dispensary door was fresher than the first encountered 
from the Emerald Isle ; the man who handed out the 
remedies was a German, acting under the direction of a 
Scotch doctor. The cook, who came in with a scalded 
hand, was a Frenchman. A coloured boy was watering 
the colonel's lawn, and further along officers' row two 
Japanese servants were snatching a word and gesture 
as they scuttled along on errands. 

**And we thought that we had discovered *pure 
America,' " sighed the disheartened enthusiasts. " Re- 
minds me of the House of Representatives," remarked 
the Congressman in the party, and he spoke without 
reckless exaggeration, for the foreign-born, or the man 
of foreign-born parents, does appear in considerable variety 
in our national Legislature. 

In fact, from the East Side district of New York, which 
is our doorstep, where foundlings of every nationality are 
laid for Uncle Sam's adoption — to the highest niches in 
the Government, the foreigner is always with us, and the 
amalgamation of this citizenship of all races within our 
gates into the American type is like alchemy. 

The native American may protest against the foreign 



IN GENERAL 3 

invasion as in the incident given, but the fact that the 
foreigner's " foreigner-ness " never survives two generations, 
that distinct American ideals hold supreme in Home life 
as well as in the Government, should be regarded by him 
as the real phenomenon. 

We have our stock-in-trade pleasantries over this forced 
maturity of citizenship. There is the story of the Irish 
and German immigrants who quarrelled in the steerage 
before landing, Max whipping Pat ; but the next week, 
Pat, as a member of the New York police force, arrested 
Max, a full-fledged saloon-keeper, for having his place 
open on Sunday. Likewise the story of a Middle West 
political meeting of local import when a certain " Michael 
O'Toole " was nominated for office. 

" Who's he ? " demanded a hardy opponent. 

" 'Tis me brother on his way here on the ship from 
the ould country," calmly avers Michael O'Toole's 
Americanized relative, and the convention is satisfied. // 

But, aside from the humorous 'point of view,^tliis 
constant assimilation of foreign element into a oneness of 
national life and custom makes a convincing description 
of everyday life in American homes hard to give. The 
truth is that from the very beginning we were a composite 
people, or, rather, a complex people, in the total of which 
the various elements did not at any time very successfully 
compose. In New England States there was a nearer 
approach to uniformity than elsewhere ; but in the Middle 
States, and to a less degree in the Southern States, each 
State differed markedly from the others, and the classes in 
each from one another. These differences rather grew 
than lessened until the middle of the nineteenth century. 
They were, curiously enough, largely put in the way of 
adjustment by the fusing influence of the Civil War, the 
destruction of slavery, and the reorganization of the South 
on the basis of labour no longer servile. They were still 
further and more powerfully affected by the marvellously 



4 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

rapid and extensive development of the means of inter- 
course and by that most subtle and invincible of unifying 
forces, freedom of trade within our vast territory. It was 
only when Mr. Bryce came to visit us after the Civil War 
that it was possible clearly to distinguish the traits of a 
truly national life, and the existence of a crude but power- 
ful national consciousness. And then came immigration, 
and, curiously enough, under that heterogeneous pressure, 
the welding has progressed more rapidly than ever 
before. It seems almost incredible, in view of the figures 
of our foreign population ; and not only statistics but 
what one sees in our cities, would seem to refute the 
possibility of distinctively American characteristics and 
home life. In London and Paris, while there are foreign 
bits, the general impression is of uniformity. The names 
on the signs have a national unity with rare exceptions. 
In New York irregularity alone is regular. London is 
the capital of the great British Empire — one never forgets 
that — and in its narrow streets with their low buildings one 
sees many a barbarian and occasional specimens from all 
her colonies ; but for actual cosmopolitance of population 
Paris is perhaps more noteworthy than London. And 
New York outruns either. 

In fact, all the large cities in the United States are 
aggregates of little cities — real cities, not " quarters," and 
not on the basis of division of means and caste, but of 
i-ace — little cross sections of the Old World transplanted 
intact, and steadfast in customs, home life, and traditions 
as the first English colonists dropped in the new world 
wilderness. 

The human wilderness of lower New York is to-day a 
bundle of distinct foreign cities. The number of native 
Italians and their children now in New York make a total 
equal to Rome's present population, or more Italians than 
Florence and Venice put together. This " Little Italy " 
with its original centre at " Mulberry Bend," bids fair to be 



IN GENERAL 5 

a " greater Italy." As each of the little cities in New 
York has its predilection in the matter of stores, Little 
Italy runs to grocery establishments and clothes emporiums, 
where previous servitude seems the one essential to inclu- 
sion in the stock. For squares here one sees only Italian 
signs and the sleek oily braids of hatlcss women in start- 
ling-toned petticoats and laced bodices, until the ordinary 
street scene looks more like an open-air rehearsal of an 
opera chorus, than even the streets of Old Italy itself do, 
for in the tenement environment peasantry massed in this 
way brings an unreal atmosphere. But perhaps the 
weirdest foreign city in New York is that which has won 
for the region about the Lower Bowery the nickname of 
the New Jerusalem. It is said to contain three times 
as many Hebrews as the Ghetto of London, five times 
that of Paris, and six times that of Berlin. If there are 
1,068,282 Jews in Greater New York, as has been recently 
estimated, this would be fifteen times more than Syria 
and Palestine contain, and twenty-five times more than 
the entire population of Jerusalem itself. 

And it would seem as if a million of the new world 
Jews were in the Bowery settlement. In no European 
country does the Jewish quarter seem so much a world 
apart. The flower of trade in this city of Jews is dry goods 
and clothes, with lace establishments for a second choice, 
and throngs pass busily among the push-carts, elbowing 
each other in the streets, and their rivals upon the inner 
pavement edge — the stores. Who walks there passes 
between a corridor of eyes, and you feel that your weakness 
and possessions are judged at a glance, for the wisdom of 
their race is in their eyes, and you feel, above all, a foreigner 
on this particular spot of American soil. Away from the 
eternal driving of bargains, seen in their restful moments, 
in the family life, these people make one feel more the 
foreigner than ever in their new Canaan. In the after- 
noons the tribes assemble in the breathing-space of park in 



6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

their congested metropolis. Men with their families come 
and sit upon the benches in domestic content. One may 
notice that this people, whatever concession to the new 
world demand they may make in the articles of trade, is 
yet most careful of the things which are of itself. While 
together it speaks only Yiddish — never Russian or English. 
There is, of course, the difference between the old genera- 
tion and the new. The younger Jews wear patent leather 
shoes of the shiniest kind, and their clothes are in the 
mode, if not in advance, according to the Bowery prophets. 
But the older people have a patriarchal air. The men 
dress in black, and beards among them are common. A 
type which perhaps may be seen only here, but here 
frequently, is the old Jew dressed in tall silk hat and 
square frock coat, old too and lustreless and of antique 
design, but worn with simple and perfect dignity. In the 
heavy-lidded eyes of this type of patriarch, moving sadly 
among his commercial people in the midst of the new 
commercial world, one may read the history of the race. 
But one sees Jews of every type in this American 
Jerusalem. The eager chafFerer of extreme gesticulation 
(the kind of whom it is said, without hands they would 
be dumb), the ascetic, the student, the dark, the fair and 
of every degree — they are here, a city by themselves, and 
this in America. 

There are several New York daily newspapers which 
are published in Hebrew. But for that matter, almost all 
of our foreign-born citizens have their own papers and their 
own theatres. German, French and Italian papers are 
found in most of the cities, while periodicals of less frequent 
appearances are in Spanish, Turkish, Russian, Finnish, 
Roumanian, Japanese, and Chinese. 

In the midst of the foundry clang of New York there is 
a little city of silence. It is Chinatown, and, on entering it 
from the boiler factory of a business square criss-crossed 
with elevated trains, you feel you have crossed the Pacific 



IN GENERAL 7 

in one step. In this Chinatown the citizens move noise- 
lessly on felt-soled shoes, and they have a foreign way of 
walking in the streets which go in such crocks that one of 
them describes a semicircle and, with true Oriental polite- 
ness, eventually leads you back to the street you just left. 
Chinese women leading their fascinating, incredible, doll- 
children, patter about, glossy and clean as a whistle, amid 
one of the most unsanitary combinations of filth in the 
United States ; while the men in this Celestial city prowl 
about with stealthy tread until, however harmless they 
may be, they suggest melodrama of opium dens and high- 
binders. And when you find one of them silently regarding 
you from strange crannies of ramshackle structures, you 
feel yourself the victim of a sinister plan. The fact is, 
however, that he is merely speculating on your probable 
value as a prospective customer ; for Chinatown, as all the 
other foreign cities in America, has been exploited by 
society folk slumming, until the inhabitants look at you in 
surprise if you come down after six in anything but 
evening clothes. 

But Chinatown is truly a separate world. The town's 
private affairs are governed by a committee of twelve 
prominent Chinese merchants and an annually elected 
mayor. The business of the municipality is drawn partly 
from curious sight-seers, but largely from native patrons, 
and many a Chinese woman has lived and borne her 
children and supplied her diminutive house-keeping and 
personal wants without ever having set foot beyond the 
narrow streets of this little silent city in the heart of New 
York. 

New York's Chinatown is a mere outpost compared to 
that of San Francisco and the Chinese quarters in the 
cities of the North- West. An American writer illumines 
a phase of America's relation to this utterly unassimilable 
race. " California, and San Francisco especially, are in a 
large measure indebted to the Oriental race," he reminds 



8 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

us, " who in the early days of the State were the hewers of 
wood, and drawers of water, and cooks, and the laundry 
men of the adults, and nurses of the infants. 

"The newer generation of Californians grew up with 
baby-loving, devoted Chinese servants about them. The 
sons and daughters of the Golden West did not, indeed, 
draw their first sustenance from yellow breasts, as the 
Southerner has drawn it from black ones. That mystic 
bond was lacking. But a Chinese man-servant had 
watched the cradle above most of them, rejoiced with the 
parents that there was a baby in the house, laughed to see 
it laugh, hurried like a mother at hearing it cry. A back- 
yard picture in any of the old Californian mansions include 
always the Chinese cook, grinning from the doorway on 
the playing babies. 

"The Chinese cook was a volunteer nurse. For him 
the nursery was the soul of the house. He was the con- 
soler and fairy-tale teller of childhood. He passed on to 
the children his own nursery tales of flowered princesses 
and golden dragons ; he taught them to patter in singsong 
Cantonese ; he saved his frugal nickels to buy them quaint 
little gifts, and as the better Southerner, despising the race, 
loves the individual negro through this association of child- 
hood, so the Californian came to love the Chinaman that 
he knew. In his ultimate belief, indeed, he outstripped the 
Southerner, for he came first to a tolerance of the race and 
then to an admiration." 

So much for the subtle influence of these aliens in our 
midst ; to the casual observer the city of these almond- 
eyed brethren has always been a realm of artistic com- 
position, subtle colouring, and shadowy suggestion — 
everything un-American. Since the earthquake, China- 
town in San Francisco has shown phoenix-like qualities in 
rising again out of its ashes. The new buildings are all 
Oriental, not of Western architecture, and while it will 
probably soon be the care and vexation of boards of health, 



IN GENERAL 9 

as old Chinatown was, it will always be beautiful, falling 
everywhere into its foreign pictures. 

You see a balcony, a woman in soft gauzy robes, a 
window whose blackness suggests mystery and the artist's 
hand, and these streets, spotted with the multi-coloured 
banners of gold and green that hang out as sign-boards, 
form a bewildering contrast to the shops and wholesale 
houses, and unimaginative rows of American houses. 

It is a common joke that the Irish own New York and 
Boston, and run them to suit themselves, and with the Irish 
population of New York nearly three times as large as that 
of either Dublin or Belfast and Boston holding second 
place in the United States as a city of Irishmen, and all of 
them ambitious, their prominence in politics is as legitimate 
as it is undeniable. Some one has said that it is astonish- 
ing how often one finds that a prominent Englishman, in 
military, literary or political life, is really an Irishman ; 
and over here one is not astonished at all, because one takes 
it for granted that any prominent American is of Irish 
descent until it is disproved. 

The German supremacy in the Middle Western States 
marks home life there so thoroughly that a German tourist 
is said to have remarked that he felt more at home in 
Milwaukee than in Berlin. One never thinks of the State 
of Minnesota without a mental image of " Yan Yonson " 
and " Ole Olscn " and his tribe there, while Norwegians, 
and Finns, too, have exclusive colonies in the agricultural 
belt still further west. Even Puritan New England 
draws its industrial vitality from Scandinavian workers, or 
from French-Canadian (Cannuck) settlements that have 
leaked over from the northern border. 

America is really a congress of nations in permanent 
session. Other countries are Meccas of interest to tourists, 
but foreigners who come to America come to live. They 
may have cherished false hopes of the extent of personal 
liberty, and of the ease with which money is to be acquired. 



lo HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

but at least they stay. From all of which arises the 
difficulty in finding a standard mould of home life or of type 
as yet in America. Certain broad attributes of character 
have been evolved throughout the country, but the details 
of the household still vary with the different nationality 
it represents in direct descent or in marriage crossing. 

The visiting foreigner does not see these great cross 
sections of foreign lands in our midst. He is in search of 
the typical American, and he takes his observations from 
" Long Acre Square,"— ^hat space included in the irregular 
widening of one of New York's biggest traffic avenues 
and its slow crossing of another seething avenue and a 
small radius of intervening streets — which, if not yet the 
centre of the world, as the New Yorker believes, by the 
general consent of the world, certainly, is to America, 
including Canada and Mexico and most of South America, 
what the Place de la Concorde is to Europe — the centre of 
a continent. 

Within that compact little patch there are twenty-one 
first-class theatres, about the same number of clubs — 
America's most famous restaurants — not less than a dozen 
hotels, any one of which twenty years ago would be 
observed for its great size and elegance. There are literally 
hundreds of apartment houses ; there are studios, and there 
are some houses where people sometimes go hungry. But 
one mentions such things for the value of contrast, for the 
characteristic of "The Acre" is gaiety, light, laughter, 
good dressing, feeding, drinking, and good fellowship ; and 
if people will crawl into its corners and starve there, they 
fail to diminish the general tone of the " Acre," which is 
exceedingly gay. 

And perhaps the visiting foreigner does well to take 
his observations here, for here he catches his glimpse of the 
composite American who bubbles to the top of this huge 
melting-pot of all nationalities. 

For outside, and even from the interior of those nuclei 



IN GENERAL ii 

of other races, there is going on continually a fusion of 
bloods, a modification of race characteristics, of physical 
form as well as habits of living and ways of thinking, until 
gradually there is a metamorphosis into a distinct American 
type among persons of European descent. 

A recent immigration commission, appointed to investi- 
gate how far American breaks down alien characteristics, 
has made a comparison of measurements and a study of 
temperament among foreign-born and their descendants, 
with the result that most stable racial characteristics were 
found to change in America. "Racial and physical 
characteristics," the report concludes, "do not survive 
under the new social and climatic environment of America. 
If American environment can bring about an assimilation 
of the head forms in the first generation, may it not be that 
other characteristics may be as easily modified, and that 
there may be a rapid assimilation of widely varying nation- 
alities and races to something that may be well called an 
American type ? " 

Still, that type has not yet evolved. Facially it is slow 
to make. There is as yet no facial type among our middle 
and lower classes. 

So much is said abroad of the American " face " that 
the foreigner expects to find us in this country all of a 
mould, from the Bostonian who traces descent to a " May- 
flower" passenger, to the Italian immigrant who still 
dreams of Italian skies and poverty, as he sells semi-putrid 
vegetables at usurious rates in a damp cellar in the new 
world " Little Italy." It is true there is a type of American 
face among our comfortably-off classes, or rather a type of 
expression, that could belong to no other land, and yet a 
curious physiognomy among prosperous American people. 
From the very beginning, from the landing of the Puritans, 
this has been a country of strife. Women as well as men 
had, in the early days, to fight for their homes. No amount 
of wealth and ease among later generations seems to have 



12 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

been able completely to destroy the atmosphere of virility 
and strength in which our women once moved. Women 
became so accustomed to heroic deeds thrust upon them in 
our colonial and revolutionary days that heredity still 
insists upon fitting their serious, almost stern, faces upon 
their luxury-wrapped descendants. It takes more fat to 
engulf the rugged character outline of the American 
woman's face than the features of the women of any other 
race. Many American women who have known only 
comfort and whose mental exertion is limited to frocks 
and stage love stories, have the thinker's furrow between 
the brows, and strength and activity in their rather sharp 
features. There is a humorous side to this appearance of 
a sibyline expression and strong cast of features on the 
exponent of the luxurious habits which come of national 
wealth. Untouched of longing for independence and 
activity, mental or physical, the average well-off American 
woman — that type seen abroad — looks keen and shrewd 
and as inspired for work and expectant as her Puritan 
ancestors were. 

Even in the type of American beauty there is the 
influence of the pioneer mother. Her firm chin is a trifle 
square, and has not the roundness nor the dimple of the 
placid classic type. The expression is earnest, almost 
tragic, as compared with the calm, benign eyes, bowed lips 
and aesthetic chin of the accepted European type of 
beauty. And yet this type of American woman is 
generally as free from passion and deep emotion as she 
is removed from the commercial abihty her brow and 
chin proclaim. 

But the fact remains that among the lower classes 
there is no settled type of colouring nor contour as yet ; 
indeed, we might be considered farther from a type in that 
strata than we were fifty years ago, for immigration and 
inter- marriage has run us into many new moulds. 

That the amalgamation goes on in such complete 



IN GENERAL 13 

subjection to Anglo-Saxon influence ; that we have evolved 
distinct national points of view, distinct social custom ; 
that our manners and even our morals or immorals — 
for of course no European ever overlooks our divorce 
evil — have become standardized to a certain extent ; that 
Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, Easter, in church and 
home, become more and more alike the country over ; 
that there is " for better or worse " developing a distinctively 
American home life ; is as if the builders of the Tower of 
liabel had succeeded in founding a colony without actual 
dialects, and with the cut of the clothes and even the 
shape of the hands tending to uniformity — a type. For 
after we have digested such statistics as those of the dis- 
tinguished scientist who claims that the people of German 
origin in the United States numbering 30,000,000 form an 
absolute majority so far as nationality is concerned, and 
that in spite of the unimportance to which the German 
tongue is condemned to-day, America is internally German, 
and not English ; after we have shuddered properly over 
the deductions of our own magazine writers, who cry aloud 
that the Anglo-Saxon race in America is doomed to follow 
the buffalo and the red man into extinction, and that as a 
result of the pouring of European hordes into the Western 
world, and the revival here, through crossing and mixing 
of blood, of submerged ancestral traits, a mongrel race of 
humanity may get a footing in our soil, and the American 
woman of to-day changed to a creature with the feminine 
characteristics of the age of chipped flints ; after we have 
beheld ourselves in the newspapers, a degenerating race of 
pigmy physique and lost ethics, the result of too much rich 
blood, bolting our meals, fried things, wasting our saliva 
on the pavements instead of saving it for our digestion, 
liberty run to license, and other delicately worded charges ; 
after every form of discouraging prophecy from within and 
without for the future of America ; it is of some comfort 
really to look into the homes that make up America and 



14 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

mark the overwhelming uniformity on breakfast-table and 
around the evening lamp at night, and realize that the 
national diet is not mince pit nor buckwheat cakes (on 
which point, however, Matthew Arnold, when visiting 
America, is said to have reassured his wife by remarking, 
" Try them, my d'yah, they're not half so nahsty as they 
look "), and that the family is not composed of lank, nervous, 
dyspeptic, hysterical, frivolous and immoral individuals. 
On the contrary, I venture to say that in no country 
does the cosey home-life of the bourgeoisie — the scramble 
intimate of children and family pets, and elders — so 
thoroughly permeate its middle and upper classes as in 
the United States, and that so far from being in a state 
of dyspeptic, neurasthenic, catarrhal degeneracy, America, 
like Napoleon's army, '* marches on its stomach." 

Even the American child, comment upon whose 
spindled-shanked, pastry-faced, nervous condition we have 
admitted at times almost apologetically, proves by the 
measurements of some scores of thousands of American 
school children and their classification according to nation- 
ality, parentage, and descent, to have spindled to the 
extent of becoming from an inch to two and one-half 
inches taller than the school children of the same or 
corresponding class in most European countries. He 
proves to be, too, from three to twelve pounds heavier 
at all ages than the little John, Pat and Jean in our 
schools ; Teutonic little Max alone out-weighs him. 
Moreover, despite the fact, childhood in America is 
supposed to entail a diet largely of candy and chewing- 
gum and a sitting up until all hours and no family dis- 
cipline to speak of, the foreign blood does not seem to 
have vitiated under the less Spartan regime of infancy, for 
the second generation of American school children, that is, 
those of American-born parents, are above the average 
in both height, weight, and chest measurement of those born 
before the parents emigrated to America, or representing 



IN GENERAL 15 

the first generation of American-born ; and those from 
families three generations in America have a still higher 
average. 

Figures and measurements, however, will not release us 
from the charge of a national defect in our home training 
of the child. A foreigner who had been entertained in the 
home of the president of one of our universities, while 
delivering a course of lectures there, told, not without a 
little awe, but with much anxiety for the next generation 
in America, of the premature emotions and the dictatorship 
of the little men and women (he insists there are no 
children in America) of the household. It seems one 
small boy had been asked to resign his monopoly of the 
bathroom, where he was sailing tin swans and fish, that his 
distinguished father might "tub," and was much incensed 
over the procedure. He appeared shortly in the guest 
room with "a sardonic grin spread over his baby face." 
I (These are the perturbed foreign guest's words.) 

" Do you want to know something ? " he remarked 
"The president of this college won't have any bath this 
\ morning. Do you know why .? Because I've got the plug 
to the bath-tub in my pocket, and it's going to stay there, 
see?" 

"Whatever will become of a race of such ill-bred 
kiddies ? " the shocked guest concluded. 

To complete the incident, I feel constrained to add that 
an American listener made matters worse, first by finding 
humour in the situation, and then by maintaining that 
the American youngster is so " infernally ingenious " that 
he makes the children of other lands look like doughy 
editions of mechanical toys ; that the boy in question was 
more than likely to turn out a railroad president, if he did 
not run to pure intellect and become the ruler in a brain 
centre of the country like his father ; and that the male 
1 adult in America wasn't worrying about the future of the 
I rising generation, but rather taking serious consideration 



i6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

as to what was going to happen to him when they grow up 
and come into competition with him. 

This is, I confess, a regrettably general attitude of the 
American. There is certainly a wrong to be righted in 
the licensed precocity of the American child, and, until 
we cease to regard the matter facetiously, we cannot 
righteously resent foreign criticism of the discomforts of 
our child-ruled, servantless (in the real sense of the word) 
home life. 

Of course the predominant note of our home life so far 
as records go, is the looseness of our marriage tie. Our 
critics, friendly and unfriendly, shout a symphonic chorus 
in the absolute unison of statistics on that point. 

Yet it might not be a bad idea to recall occasionally 
that in certain trivial eccentricities affecting the home life — 
such as wife-beating, burglary, ill-treating children, thiev- 
ing, and drunkenness — the United States has a much lower 
average than in corresponding European districts. And it 
might be added that we have less than a fourth, for the 
most part less than a twentieth, of the number of paupers 
and dependants compared with Europe, and nearly four 
times as many of our foreign-born become paupers as of 
our native-born population ; but this may be, as an 
American critic once remarked, " no fault of ours." Our 
virgin soil and our fierce determination to be rich at all 
hazards having automatically protected us against this 
defect without any special intention on our part. 

Our great resources and material achievement have 
also been used as a sop to Cerberus by our foreign critics. 
When they have told us that our country was apparently 
created by nature in the " full tide of a high Rennaissance," 
there does not seem to appear to be any reason in the 
foreign mind why Americans should object to having dear 
old Uncle Sam commented on as merely " a composite of 
equally unaesthetic skyscrapers, millionaires and pugilists " ; 
or after having been assured that we have accomplished 



IN GENERAL 17 

marvels in industry, invention, bridging and mining, who 
would be ungracious enough to resent the statement that 
we are regarded as a society (not connected with the 
human brotherhood society) " pervaded by red-shirts and 
bad manners, the only exception being the millionaires, 
who have discarded the former and kept the latter." 

The average foreigner is willing to proclaim his good- 
will toward America, but in his ordinary conversation he 
forgets his philosophy, and remembers disparaging 
anecdotes about our manners. He dilates upon the 
possibilities of fortune-making in America, but he never 
forgets that it was an American millionaire who refused to 
wear his enormous diamond studs at a dinner because, 
" VVhat'd be the use ; the napkin covers 'em up any way." 

If pressed for departing sentiment, he toasts the spirit 
of liberty in America — 

" In Italy they are hoping for liberty. In France they 
are studying about it in their histories. In Germany 
they are utterly oblivious of it. In England they think 
they have it. And here in America you have it and you 
know it," he says ; but he holds as stock episode of his 
visit the fact that the man whom he had never seen before, 
riding opposite to him in a railway coach, leaned forward 
to slap his knee as he exclaimed heartily, *' Going 
through? I'm on the way out to my old home to my 
father's funeral. What did you pay for those boots ? 
cracker-jacks, aren't they ? " 

The general feeling fifty years ago as summed up in 
the remark of one of Martin Chuzzlewit's contemporaries, 
" everything degenerates in America. The lion becomes 
a puma, the eagle a fish-hawk, and man a Yankee," 
apparently has veered to an awe of the physical Uncle 
Sam, but a shudder for his crude force, and in a very 
recent work an English novelist, after a rapid transit study 
of the United States, brings one of her characters to 
Washington, and with him as her mouth-piece, seriously 
c 



i8 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

avows, " His English soul was disturbed and affronted by 
a wholly new realization of the strength of America ; by 
the giant forces of the new nation, as they are to be felt 
pulsing in the Federal City. He was up in arms for the 
Old World, wondering sorely and secretly what the new 
might do for her in the times to come, and foreseeing 
an ever-increasing deluge of unlovely things — ideals, prin- 
ciples, manners — flowing from this Western civilization, 
under which his own gods were already half buried, and 
would soon be hidden beyond recovery." 

I do not think this extreme perturbation affects England 
as a whole, but I have known English women whose 
husbands were accredited to the United States as members 
of the diplomatic corps to sigh with relief when a transfer 
made it possible to remove their children from the bane- 
ful influence of " unmannerly street-playing American 
children," as they might over the removal of their infants 
from the enervation of India. 

There are, of course, many good Americans who are 
as immune to any feeling of deference or awe as, to quote 
a celebrated Italian visitor, " an egg in the days of its 
first innocency." For instance, one would think that 
almost any flippant lawyer would lose his nerve when he 
faces the Supreme Court. The air is full of dignity and 
the bar of the court, behind which sit the black-robed and 
venerable jurists, is about as inviting as the tomb to the 
young lawyers who appear in their first cases. Not so 
with a young lawyer who appeared a few days ago. The 
court has a rule which fixes two hours for oral argument, 
and is reluctant to grant more time. The novice asked 
for additional time for his speech. 

*' How much time does the learned counsel want .'' " 
asked the Chief Justice. 

" Just as much time as you folks will give us," answered 
the lawyer, leaning forward in a confidential way. Every- 
body laughed except the black-robed justices. 



IN GENERAL 19 

And many of us in our nafve innocence would, indeed, 
seem to regard culture as obtainable through a sort of 
innoculation. I met a charmingly fresh young woman 
from the West whose aunt was introducing her to Wash- 
ington society, and who had ridden too many years over 
her father's ranch to be anything but as frank as a prairie 
landscape. " Oh yes," she beamed, " auntie has brought 
us on here, and, if the polish takes, she may let us go over 
to London after she's broken us in here." As an actual 
fact, however, our material development is insignificant in 
interest compared with our sociological evolution. We are 
a suddenly developed people, and have packed into the 
American all the good and all the bad of the best and the 
worst from all over the world, and we have been too busy 
developing our resources to cultivate our sensibilities. 

We are a young people among the nations of the earth. 
We have been set in the midst of a virgin continent. 
Our first task naturally has been the purely material one 
of conquering the wilderness and producing wealth out of 
our resources. The natural result of our long complete 
absorption in this task is to be seen in our characteristic 
national virtues and vices. We are a people of unsur- 
passed energies, of unparalleled ingenuity and skill in 
individual inventions and pursuits. Therein is our charac- 
teristic strength. But just as naturally, we are more 
crudely, crassly materialistic in our ideas and ideals only — 
and this the visiting foreigner cannot be expected to see — 
while the amenities and finer graces of life seem as yet 
to have eluded the majority of us underneath the surface 
in the making of national character, Republicanism has 
been a success. W^hilc we have not as yet produced a 
great art, we are actually getting a strong feeling for art 
and literature, and this in a country where the social 
elevation of uncultured persons of sudden wealth is an 
everyday occurrence ; while our servants and children say 
abruptly " yes " or " no," and the serving-man has not 



20 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

" thank you " in his vocabulary, our people do not hate 
one another as do the people in Europe. 

It must be remembered that we are just around the 
corner from the time told of by the Honourable Joseph 
G. Cannon, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
when certain elders of the church, calling upon his mother 
in her rude Middle West home, saw to their horror, a rag 
carpet in the parlour, and, after looking at each other and 
at her sadly for some time, one of them asked : " Do you 
expect to have this and heaven too ? " Just around the 
corner we are from a significant incident of our greatest 
American, Lincoln, whose unconventionality was the 
confident expression of his greatness. The British 
Minister accredited to Washington during the Civil War, 
a diplomat dignified and formal, dining alone with full 
courses and ceremony, was interrupted by the announce- 
ment of President Lincoln, who followed the servant into 
the dining-room and took his seat at the table. Of course 
the Minister was as astonished as if it had been the King 
in the countries where he had before served. Formally 
he urged the President to join him in the dinner, but 
Lincoln answered, " No, Lyons, I have had my dinner ; 
if anything comes which is inviting, I'll browse around ; " 
but before the President departed, the ever-present, 
dangerously acute situation and fear of Great Britain's 
recognition of the Confederacy and the means of averting 
it were under discussion. 

But we are around the corner from primitive simplicity, 
and the resolution to be mannerly if we cannot be great 
would not be out of order for most of us. It is quite 
useless to say that manners and conventions are a matter 
of comparative " shockables with each nation " ; to say 
that the English are aghast at our chaperonless daughters, 
but that we shudder at the cigarette ; in short, that 
foreign criticism of our manners is merely a matter of the 
F*renchman bewailing the lack of sidewalk caf6s or the 



IN GENERAL 21 

Englishman bemoaning the absence of tea shops ; there 
is something deeper than that in our contempt or hurried 
disregard of the non-essentials of life. 

Still recognizing the wonder that we have, in a new 
country with raw and unstable conditions, acquired the 
deep-seated impulse for practising the humanities, every 
American to-day should pause to consider wherein lies 
the explanation for the crudeness of public manners, 
observed by even our kindliest critics as an attribute of 
very much the larger proportion of American people. 

In the first place, manners in the United States must 
come as an exponent of our civilization — distinctly as a 
polish superimposed on a sterling substance of character, 
not bred in the fibre and intermingled with the instinct 
of self-preservation or the " bread and butter " problem. 
For manners are not requisite for success in this Republic. 
The self-made man is the order of the day, and disregard 
for the non-essentials of life never kept a man in the 
United States from riding roughshod to the political front. 

Society, since it has not the raison d\trc of the court 
and political circles abroad, is regarded by the average 
American citizen as applying mainly to the capers cut 
by certain rich people in their summer diversions. Men 
in America do not seek the society of women, and there- 
fore social intercourse is limited. This may be significant 
of the independence and strength of manhood here ; it may 
be a sad commentary on the American woman's inability 
to cross the line of the domestic sphere into the field of 
camaraderie and mental interests with men ; but the 
result is a certain lack of culture, a certain crudity of 
manner in both American men and women. 

And further down the scale, of course, manners would 
seem to be shunned as a plague destined to destroy the 
I-am-as-good-as-you-are principle. A witty Englishman 
has said of the American that "his dream is to be his 
neighbour's president," and it is not untrue, but it merely 



22 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

takes the place of trying to establish a claim to bluer 
blood as rises the ambition in older countries. The 
American is usually a true republican in the sense that he 
thinks himself as good a man as any, but he also thinks 
any man as good as himself. Owing to the first of these 
mental states, he considers courtesy and suavity as 
denoting servility or inferiority on his part, and, because 
of the second, he doesn't want the other fellow to " give 
himself airs," and between the horns of the dilemma is 
the problem of a national code of manners tossed, and it 
does not stick. 

We say in lofty republicanism, " The sweep of the 
peasant's cap has been measured by the length of the 
nobleman's sword, and there is as much sincerity in the 
former as there is force in the latter," but we do not 
realize that in completely shearing the foreigner landing in 
this country of his manners by our force of example we 
are complicating our problem of assimilating him into a 
desirable citizen. One has but to work among the foreign 
immigrants settled in any American city to realize this. 
The metamorphosis of the soft-voiced, obsequious courtesy 
of the peasant to the independent insolence of a labourer 
in a country where social equality is preached, does not 
take a generation. 

Perhaps the imperfection of finish is perfectly normal 
in a new Republic — and America is, of course, an ex- 
perimental station in Republicanism — and perhaps the 
American would lose value as a national developer if 
divested of his rugged disregard of social amenities. 
Perhaps with the nation as with the individual of great 
mental dimensions, the early personality is somewhat 
ungainly. Perhaps, as is said of the provincialism of the 
middle-class French woman, she " has the defect of her 
greatness " ; the sum total of the American's superficial 
faults and weakness, and his virtues and strength certainly 
leaves a substantial balance in his favour. 



IN GENERAL 23 



I ....„,... 

they have enthroned woman higher and will work longer 
and harder for happiness of wife or child than any men on 
the footstool of God. The Frenchman expresses his ever- 
lasting faculty of wonder and devotion to the " eternal 
feminine " in an aphorism : " // 7i'a rien de plus important 
que les damesy But many of them raise this interest to 
an obsession, which is indisputably detrimental to the race. 
Even the sedate, middle-aged bourgeois will look back 
complacently upon a past of which he is proud in direct 
ratio to its luridity — a feeling mainly traceable to the 
place women hold in Frenchmen's minds. 

Now the ** lady-killer " type is exceedingly rare in 
America. Also club life, as it is known in England, 
flourishing everywhere and in every walk of life there, has 
not succeeded in America outside a narrow section in each 
large city. The American man's life as a rule is a beaten 
track between his place of business and home. When, by 
some unavoidable circumstance, he is drawn out of it, you 
do not find him entertaining, because he has been too 
busy to allow himself any interest other than his work. 
" Friendship requires leisure," says Emerson, and certainly 
manners are not less exacting in that respect, and in 
the face of necessities of haste the amenities of life give 
way. 

Yet in the home of a man who would describe him- 
self as "just a plain business man" I discovered, pinned 
up in each of his four boys' rooms, a typewritten slip of 
paper, put there by the father, with these rules of life 
thereupon : — 

" Rule I. — Don't be saucy to your mother ; she's the 
Queen. 

" Rule II. — When you get in trouble, come to your dad ; 
he's your best friend. 

" Rule III. — Play the game straight." 

And it seems to be typical of the deference, tendernebs 



24 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

and probity in the average outwardly absorbed, brusque 
American man. 

The burden of our manners would seem to rest with 
the American woman. This being a nation of masses, not 
classes, manners do not come as insignia of a station in 
life, neither can they be legislated for federally nor by 
state right; so, if American mannersiare to be mended, it 
must be through the American woman in the American 
home. 

" The permanency of the American Republic," in the 
opinion of a recent writer, " depends upon the home life 
of its people," so they who would form an opinion as to 
what the future has in store for this country, from wealth 
to manners, should go into the family circles. 

I cannot hope, beneath a few simple statements and 
figures, to convey either prophecy or profound analysis ; 
but I do believe that if the same author's conclusion that 
" the best American ideal is so noble and good that its 
triumph would be a blessing to the entire human race," be 
true, we should gain some appreciation of it in American 
home life. 



I 



CHAPTER II 
THE AMERICAN CHILD 



NOTHING illustrates better the way America takes 
hold of a national fault and tries to remedy it 
than the remodelling of the type of child among 
our prosperous classes. A foreigner, asked off-hand to 
give an example of an imp, will reply unhesitatingly, 
"An American child a^jed between two and fourteen 
years"; and in many hotels on the Continent there is a 

j standing rule never to admit American children. A care- 

' ful look-out is kept, and if a family of American tourists 
accompanied by children presents itself, they are respect- 
fully directed elsewhere. The American child has a bad 
reputation abroad. It was Max O'Rell, I believe, who 
wondered how it was possible that such little demons as 
the American children became such passable men and 
women. It used to be hard work to convince the visitor 
to the United States that the majority of these little 
demons, tearing about the city streets, playing in " front 
yards " without a vestige of fence or hedge, and of vast 
discomfort indoors to every one except their parents, to 

j whom they were a source of unrestrained satisfaction 
did not end in prison, were not kidnapped nor molested, 

I and did, in fact,i:urn out well. I shall never forget the 
momentary look of horror that swept an Englishman's 
face when the six-years' old son of his American host, to 

I whom he was extending, an invitation, jumped up and down, 
and, pulling his father's coat, demanded shrilly, " Make 

25 



26 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

him say when, dad ! make him say when ! " or the near 
approach to collapse of a titled English woman, when the 
young hopeful of an American household interrupted 
dinner-table conversation to ask, " How it is, being from 
England, you don't drop your aitches ? " But this type of 
American child is happily changing. Some one has said 
that St. George was particularly fortunate in the moment 
when he had his picture taken. And the American child 
has been most unfortunate in this direction, for in 
America's rebound from the days when life was "more 
wrestling than dancing," child-culture was a negligible 
detail. The child, as an expression of the country, was a 
wild product, a " self-raiser," as they say of patent flour, 
and emotionally surcharged with the rest of the nation, it 
presented an independence, an aggression and a strident 
voice calculated to upset the comfort of a whole dining- 
room or car or steamship. It was at that period that the 
mental kodaks focussed upon him and snapped. Now, 
however, the bringing up of children in America has 
become a study. Their manners if not remedied, are at 
least modified; their vivacity put under some control, 
their voices trained. They are not allowed to eat 
indigestible food at late hours, and, generally speaking, 
an intense desire for improvement has been applied to 
motherhood, nursery, and schools. 

Of course the American child will always be precocious, 
though not in a bookish sense. An American boy, who 
was sent to one of the large Public Schools in England, 
was deeply impressed with the fact that English boys are 
much better students. " They act sort of girlish, but they 
can take Euclid by the back of the neck and shake the 
change out of his pockets, you bet ! " he vigorously voiced 
the distinction. The American child has a sense of a com- 
plete identification with the social group of his environ- 
ment as the adult has. He developes an alert feeling of 
security in the midst of life about him, as if he were sitting 



I 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 27 

at the theatre or " at a party," with the performance for 
his benefit. Recently, at a political gathering in a Western 
State where the suffrage has been given to women, a small 
boy insisted upon joining in the discussion. The child 
was interrupted, and told that he had no right to vote, so 
he might as well keep still. " I don't care," replied the 
young orator, " my mother can vote, so can my sister, and 
she influences her husband ! " 

The main cause of the sophistication of the American 
child lies in the fact that the side walks (pavements) are 
his playground. It is amusing, after reading some incon- 
trovertibly statistical article on the decline of the birth- 
rate, to walk, or to try to make a continuous progress 
along a residence street in any large American city, for 
you are surrounded by a continual swirl of children, as if 
some orphanage or school were having a fire-drill in each 
square. They dodge about you as a post in chasing each 
other ; you have to circumnavigate games of hop-scotch and 
jack-stones, until it seems as if Uncle Sam's miscalcula- 
tions must be solely because of his inability to count his 
children. 

Not long ago a revival of the roller-skating craze filled 
the streets with hordes of rushing, screaming, catapulting 
youngsters on wheels. Some citizens, needless to say 
childless, in one of our large cities, appealed to the autho- 
rities for protection of Hfe and limb, but were promptly 
I notified that the streets were the American child's play- 
ground, and they must " dodge " about as intruders ; and 
I have seen traffic on a busy street held up more effectively 
than the police could have achieved, while a band of little 
girls, well dressed and evidently from comfortable homes, 
clattered across the car-tracks and drive-way on their 
roller skates. At the recent historical celebration in New 
York, the public despotism of American childhood was 
nobly illustrated. There was a day given over to school 
children's parade and festivities, and about 500,000 took 



28 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

part. After the parade, there were some tableaux given 
in one of the parks by only a few of the children ; but all 
the other mites were determined to see their comrades 
perform, and the space about the young actors grew smaller 
and smaller as the little ones edged up. The marshals sat 
down in a ring and tried to hold them back, but the 
children simply walked over them. Then the police 
lieutenant and his men tried to handle that juvenile crowd 
by waving their arms, but those little ones would not be 
"shooed." They had come there to see, and see they 
would. They were American children. They wriggled 
between the legs of the big policemen, who grabbed at 
them hopelessly. Finally, the police were lost in the 
depths of the children about them, and folded their arms 
in despair. I am told that certain citizens, who had been 
prevented from getting through the lines at the two big 
parades of that celebration, rolled on the grass in pure joy 
over the victory of the children. 

Yet in their homes to-day, the American children of 
well-to-do parents — children whose mothers are American 
gentlewomen, and whose fathers are prosperous business 
and professional men — are gentle mannered, perfectly 
obedient, outwardly civil, quick to take a hint, and not at 
all disagreeable companions. It is well, since the child is 
so much in evidence in the household, that he is interest- 
ing ; and the American child is interesting, very well read 
in modern literature, up on the topics of the day (American 
children are allowed to read the newspapers as regularly 
as their fathers), and very mature in his point of view, 
through his continual presence in the elders' family circle. 

Not having, except in wealthy families, any room, either 
day or night nursery, that they can call their own, they 
roam the house at will, and it is a temptation to parody 
the American poet who wrote of " The Children's Hour," 
when every one realizes that in the usual American 
^ menage, it is twenty-four a day to their account. But it 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 29 

is the exception where the little girls do not curtsey in 
taking your hand, and the average boy in such a home 
appears more like the shy English boy on first presenta- 
tion. I think I am conservative in saying that the " terribly 
interruptious " boy, as my English friend puts it, is fast 
disappearing. The American boy is still more of the 
street gamin in his lack of polish and use of street 
vernacular than the well brought-up English boy ; but this 
is attributable to his liberty to rove about the streets, 
selecting his companions at haphazard, not being sent 
away to school as the English boy to have manners put 
in with the same drill as are algebra and Latin and his 
companionship circumscribed within his own class. 

The American boy either does not raise his cap to his 
elders as the English boy does so charmingly, or he does 
so in a sheepish way with a wary look-out for a chum who 
shall taunt him with being a " sissy" or a "softy," but the 
American boy has instilled in him in his home a chivalrous 
attitude toward his sisters and other little girls. He is, in 
fact, tyrannized over by these selfish little maids to an 
^extent which led one observing Englishman to see in the 
" giving in " demanded of the average male child the 
beginning of the so-called slavery of the American man 
to the American woman. And it has its humorous aspects. 
[I remember once coming upon a small boy and his sister, 
when the young lady, for some slight offence, had pre- 
icipitated herself upon the male offender, and was doing 
Iconsiderable damage to his countenance. The youngster 
•made no resistance beyond spreading wide his arms as 
|a martyr and calling, " Oh, do take her off ! Do take her 
loff ! I can't hit her, you know." And the general attitude 
fis expressed by another youngster who said, when a girl 
(playmate claimed a beloved mechanical toy, " Oh, well, 
take it. I 'spose you've got to have everything 'cause 
llyou're the lady." 

The American parent encourages this attitude in the 



30 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

belief that it makes for gallantry and courtesy to women ; 
and a good word should be said for the continual contact 
of parents and children in America. If the American boy 
is kept at home long after the English custom would have 
him under the hardening regimen, in one of the large 
schools, the American child gets his physical discipline in 
his rough-and-tumble experience on the streets, and to a 
believer in a parent's interest above the best paid guardian- 
ship in the world, it would seem that, in the absolute 
devotion of American parents, something might be supplied 
to the child life in the home that no amount of theory 
and well-regulated esteem bestowed by boarding schools 
touches. This intimacy of children with their parents 
may make for a want of deference toward the father later 
on, and conduce to the attitude " it's only mother " of the 
selfish American child as it accepts sacrifices as the air it 
breathes ; but home life among the middle class in the 
United States, if not strong in theory, is a national feature 
for which I think we need not blush. In the average 
household, the whole family gather about a table in the 
evening, and the children prepare their lessons for the next 
day with assistance from either parent. There is a story 
read aloud before bed-time, and the mother superintends 
the baths, and always " tucks in " the bed covers about her 
youngsters, hears their prayers, and turns out the light, 
until they are big boys and girls. To be sure, when there 
are visitors, this regime being upset, the children sit about 
and listen to the conversation of their elders, which 
assuredly is not pleasant for the visitors. However, visit- 
ing is not a national system in America. 

Of course, Americans generally believe that the 
English parent misses much in the restraint from the 
tender yearnings over the child in its baby days, while I 
have heard English mothers refer to the American 
emotionalism over their infants as the indulgence of 
primitive instinct. Leaving that controversy for the 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 31 

doctrinaires, I yet am willing to confess that, later on in 
the child's life, I do most heartily approve of the attitude 
of the English parent to this extent : when the English 
parent takes the child into companionship, the parent 
enters into the spirit of youth most enthusiastically and 
sympathetically. 

The parent becomes the child instead of, as in America, 
the child adopting other ways of his elders. Few American 
mothers would consider their dignity proof against a game 
of tennis or a romp with their children ; yet in the tea- 
time frolic in English homes I have seen mothers of 
glacial dignity ordinarily make splendid bears to crawl 
and growl after fat little legs, and the English father in a 

' game of cricket with his boys is part of the holiday 

I programme whenever possible. 

' There may be much truth in the charge that American 
mothers are too nervous to make the best companions for 

', their children, and that American fathers are strangely 

' weak and invertebrate in their relation to their children, 
but the troops of American boys and girls on their way 

* to school every morning are rather noticeable for good 
physique, and give no evidence of being over-indulged. 
There are few spindle legs, and, while quite a proportion 

I wear spectacles, it is because both schools and parents 
watch for the slightest deficiency and make every effort 
to correct it. Among the smaller children from the waist 
up it is hard to tell the sex ; the little girls wearing the 
regulation sailor blouse — chevron on sleeve, bo's'n whistle- 
cord and all, called the " Peter Thompson," after the 
crippled sailor who began the manufacture of seaman's 

I costume for little folks in America years ago. The little 
girl's dress terminates in a kilted skirt in place of brother's 
trousers, but both little boys and girls wear the hair bobbed, 
or " Dutch " style, and a tam-o'-shanter, cloth sailor cap, 

jor, in winter, a knit " stocking-cap " pulled down over the 
ears and tassel dangling brownie-wise, completes the 

\ 



32 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

costume which is so universal as to be almost uniform 
for school equipment. Girls' coats are now cut on the 
lines of the brothers', if not purchased from the boys* 
department in the shops. Half hose are worn by children 
up to eight and ten years in the warm season, but the 
movement to continue them through the winter to harden 
the little legs has never grown popular. On the other 
hand, the stiff leggings which were worn in the days when 
American boys had their manhood demeaned with wide 
ruffled collars and velvet monkey jackets over white lawn 
blouses, in the era of long curls, have passed, and from the 
cloth or linen sailor suits he is promoted to the Norfolk 
suit with close, manlike, or Eton style linen collar. The 
boy dressed like the picturesque hero of a maudlin child's 
story, and the little girl dressed like a Christmas-tree fairy 
of many skirts and ruffles — the two pictures of American 
children in foreign minds — are exceedingly rare in the 
United States to-day. Even among the very wealthy the 
sable and ermine cloaks of the little girls cover exquisite 
hand-embroidered but severely plain frocks and skirts — 
even the elaborate French bonnets, at one time such a 
prominent feature in the outfit of these little dollar 
princesses, are replaced now by fur and dark velvet hats 
with ear laps — while little gold-spoon boys wear clothing 
made by their father's tailor, and as uncompromising in 
lines as the man's. Plainness in the children's clothing 
marks a noteworthy step in America's conversion to regard 
the child as a study of species, not merely an emotional 
luxury. 

With child culture developing suddenly as a wide 
popular movement, it was only natural that it should take 
on something of shallowness, and this is demonstrated in 
the case of the American infant and the diversions of 
American children. 

First the infant. The young mother in America is 
possessed of a love-madness for her tiny infant, to an 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 33 

extent I never found in other countries, and which, while 
it is very poetical and picturesque, is harmful in many 
ways. The majority of American women nurse their 
babies, or make every effort to do so, only adopting 
artificial feeding or a wet nurse as a last resort But as the 
mother is generally nervous, and her strength drained in 
many other avenues of household and social duties, the 
child cannot flourish. It means a vast expenditure of 
vitality with the reward of a fretful, exacting American 
baby, that grows into childhood simply because " God is 
good and the race is strong." Whatever may be the 
defects of the foster-mother system abroad or, later, of 
the nursery governess, the American baby, subject to the 
passionate instincts of alternating love, tears, pride, and 
frantic despair, which sway the emotional mother in its 
care, is not to be envied. Our national curse of no 
servants cannot be accepted as the cause of this obsession 
of the American mother with the belief that in infancy her 
constant and unremitting effort for her child is necessary. 
It is a curious fact that the American mother gives, in the 
love for her baby, full sway to the emotion and demon- 
stration of affection she withholds from her husband. 

The husband and the other children are always 

I " hushed " when there is a baby in the house ; and the 

i American father whose inclination is to shed all family 

responsibility except monetary support, is brought to 

' domestic earth when there is a baby, and he is not allowed 

to feel himself above walking the floor with the infant nor 

J pushing the perambulator. The other children do not 

have the baby strapped to their back as Japanese little 

girls are saddled, but there are "little mothers" in the 

middle and upper middle classes, as well as among the 

poor in America. One cannot enter an American home 

I where a baby reigns without wishing that there could be 

'less heart and more mind in the attitude of the average 

) American mother toward her new-born. Of course there 

D 



34 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

are a growing number of households where the baby is put 
into a nursery with a good nurse, fed punctually at stated 
periods, cries little, and sleeps well — an unobtrusive 
addition to the household riches. There are even a limited 
number where modernized Spartan methods are adopted — 
the baby sleeping even at night on a porch and going 
without food, covering, or the orthodox flannel next to 
the skin — and then there is the Southern baby, who is 
still the special charge of some old coloured " mammie,'* 
who keeps it covered, downy head and all, for a month, 
and then gives it a " sugar plum " — a combination of sugar, 
cracker crumbs, and a raisin tied in a piece of cambric — 
as a '* pacifier." I have picked up the daintiest of babies, 
the child of a noted Southern beauty, and found a strong 
smell of its "mammie's" corn-cob pipe about it; but its 
mother was only amused at my remonstrance, declaring 
placidly that no one in the world knew how to care for a 
child like an old Virginia " mammie." But the average 
American baby is cared for in abject worship by its 
mother, and the household is turned topsy-turvy for the 
benefit of this smallest member. "The doctor brought 
the baby in a bottle," the other children are told, and on 
this score, rather than because of any personal grudge for 
powder or pill ministration, is many a family physician 
cordially hated and glared at on his visits from behind 
doors and stairway fastnesses by small rebellious spirits. 

The American mother shudders over the "paid mother- 
hood" given the babies of France and Germany; but I 
think, on the other hand, Continental mothers would be 
astounded at the way the American child between four 
and eleven years is turned upon the street playground like 
a young colt to pasture, for a nurse guardianship after a 
child is five years old is almost an unheard-of thing with > 
the middle and even well-to-do classes. As a result of 
this independence, the American youngster develops an 
alertness and resourcefulness that makes the children o* 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 35 

other nations seem intellectually asleep. The American 
thinks that is what the foreigner construes as pertness in 
his children. An Englishman stood watching some children 
feeding the squirrels that scamper about many of the parks 
in American cities. The squirrels were tame enough to 
try to steal from unguarded bags of nuts, and the children 
were luring them with empty hands. Other children were 
about in groups, engaged in the noisy, excitable, ingenious 
games of strategy and manoeuvre which American children 
always play. The Englishman surveyed the whole scene : 
" Very American, those squirrels," he finally said, " really 
very like your children — not too many scruples, and plenty 
of cleverness." 

One spring day I heard a small voice at my front door 
ask of the maid : " Please may I come in and soap my 
legs ? " Mistrusting my ears, I investigated, and found it 
to be the six-year-old daughter of a friend, and I had not 
misunderstood. She had started for Sunday school, and 
found to her dismay that her half hose had a persistent 
tendency toward her low shoes, because, as she explained 
most earnestly, " They will not stick unless you soap your 
legs." Very solemnly the maid produced a moistened 
cake of laundry soap, and there, on the floor of my 
drawing-room, that infant anointed her chubby limbs, 
adjusted her socks with a satisfied pat, and, thanking me, 
started serious and trim for her spiritual instruction. It 
was merely typical of an American child's ingenuity. 

The Sunday school of Protestant Churches in America 
represents the Puritan idea of a religious Sabbath for 
the young, tinctured with the later laissez-faire policy 
in religious matters natural to a country without a 
State Church. There is a shyness with American 
parents about giving moral instruction to their children, 
and they rely on the inadequate expositions of these 
Sunday Schools as a substitute. The classes of younger 
children are taught by high school misses, who, as an 



36 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

American humourist has said, "conscientiously keep the 
index finger on the question-book for fear they will ask, 
* What did the Apostles do next ? ' a second time." Yet 
this is all the spiritual instruction that the child from the 
average American home receives, and the American 
parents, after their starched and brushed little brood 
have started off for " Sunday school," settle down to a 
morning's devotion to the voluminous American Sunday 
newspapers, as preparation for the noise and upheaval of 
the house when the children have returned. There is no 
religious atmosphere about the average American home, 
and yet we have not come to making it a fete day for 
family excursions to amusement parks. These pleasure 
resorts are generally closed by law on Sunday. 

The Christ Child story does not permeate the 
Christmas festivities in America, but a Santa Claus on 
broad comedy lines. One little girl showed me her 
birthday book, and among the names of the family and 
friends before the dates, I perceived that she herself had 
inscribed, at December 25th, " Santa Claus," and beneath, 
'' God." Seeing my start, she remarked : " Funny that 
they both come on the same day ! " The sight of a 
father going to church with his boys is not common 
in. America as in England. More American women 
than men attend church as is true of the theatre; but, 
in any case, few children accompany them to church. 

To the theatres American children go, with their 
mothers or alone, to a surprising extent ; for, as I have 
intimated, the diversions permitted have as yet escaped 
child-culture censorship. The foyers of so-called " high- 
class vaudeville" theatres are thronged on Saturday after- 
noons with children — well-dressed, well-groomed youngsters 
— generally unattended. The performance of " turns" and 
*' comedy skits " that they see does not contain anything 
immoral, and the occasional innuendo will pass over their 
nice little heads, but the various " acts " will be permeated 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 37 

with a broad, if not coarse, humour, beside which the slap- 
stick and clown of the English pantomime is Brovvningesque 
for subtlety, and this, taken in weekly doses — not once or 
twice a season, as with the English child — must at least 
spoil the child's appreciation of intelligent diversion if it 
does nothing worse. The American child is given the 
circus and the hippodrome and the " shoot-the-chute " style 
of entertainment from the time it can be taken in arms, and 
it becomes so accustomed to amusements that terrify and 
fascinate that any offering in the line of poetic imaginative 
child-drama misses fire. I sat next a youngster in the 
theatre who watched the final descent of the curtain on a 
Peter Pan performance with a discontented scowl. " Ain't 
there going to be any moving pictures of a bank 
robbery?" he asked. The mother sighed; but I think 
her regret was more over the fact that she might have 
given her boy more pleasure for a shilling at a "vaude- 
ville" performance than the eight shillings' worth Mr. 
Barric had afforded him — not over the question of the 
youngster's taste. 

The American parent does not seem to think it possible 
for a child to enjoy itself unless it is excited. At a lawn 
fete planned for a children's charity, one of the features was 
a real life-sized house put up for the occasion, to be set 
on fire and extinguished by a relay from the city fire 
department. As the flames shot up, the children danced 
about in nervous joy, and as the fire-engines dashed in, they 
screamed in nervous ecstasy. It would not have seemed 
unnatural to the majority of them if the host of the estate 
had set his own house on fire for their entertainment. 
Only one big-eyed tot crept up to put her hand in mine, 
and ask in an awed whisper : " Were they sure there were 
no people in it ? " A child's birthday celebration is not 
considered complete without some spectacular feature, and 
we have drifted from the ventriloquist and Punch and 
Judy show to having child actors recite and cake-walk and 



3S HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

skirt dance for the edification and emulation of a drawing- 
room full of youngsters who should be playing " King 
William was" and *'The Mulberry Bush." At one child's 
party the centre piece of the refreshment-table was a 
huge black dragon with fire issuing from its eyes, nostrils, 
and mouth. A tiny youngster gave one look, and then 
proceeded to scream himself into spasms. I heard a 
friend console the mother during the removal of the 
unappreciative infant. " They had a mechanical black 
man to give the favours last year, and my Eugene acted 
just that way ; but, you see, he doesn't mind a bit now." 

This is not among the children of the very rich, but 
among the representative class in America of comfortably 
off people, who, believing themselves to be conscientiously 
devoted to the child's best interests, are, in very excess of 
their devotion, preparing the way for nerves in the nursery 
and a suffering from what might be called enlargement of 
the emotions, which is unknown among English children, 
brought up under the calm hand of a phlegmatic nurse. 

Every nation indulges in spasmodic editions of a sort 
of tract literature on the neglected children of her rich, 
but my limited experience with the children of American 
multi-millionaires would lead me to believe them among 
the best-mannered, healthiest children in America. As 
a rule, their parents are only a generation removed from 
the condition when children are the care of the mother for 
economy's sake, and they still give their personal super- 
vision as a matter of inherited custom ; but, on the other 
hand, the formality of living forbids the " mingling of 
children with drawing-room ornaments," as in the average 
household, and they are given the secluded training of 
the best governesses and masters. This combination is 
good, for no degree of sequestration can quell the individu- 
ality of American children, and they are given a chance 
to enter that make-believe world of their own into 
which so few grown-ups can follow, instead of listening 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 39 

to the conversation of their elders, and it is in this, 
more than in the luxury of saddle-horse and fine clothes, 
that they have great advantage over the middle-class 
child. Of course there are mothers who are club women 
and bridge whist fiends to the exclusion of thought 
for the children's v/elfare, and children upon whom the 
national blight of divorce is bound to fall heaviest ; 
but if there is anything that convinces me that we 
in America talk a great deal too much about our 
degenerate rich, it is the splendid physical condition and 
the alert mentality of these children from the homes of 
great wealth ; for, after all, heredity is a pretty sure 
barometer of national virtue. They may be snobs in the 
making, these children of our rich, imbibing the frivolities 
and unworthy tendencies of the age — one hears queer 
stories of the little girl who refuses to wear a flannel 
petticoat because it " spoils her figure," and the son of a 
millionaire who answers a guest's request for a glass of 
water by indicating the electric bell and suggesting, " We 
have servants, you know," but I have never found them 
anything but most democratic youngsters, and splendid 
specimens of the human race. 

The children of the tenements loom large in America's 
problems. These slum communities of America are filled 
almost entirely with people of foreign birth. New York 
City is the best illustration. Into that region lying 
between the Bowery and the East River, the most thickly 
populated part of this world, there is poured every year a 
flood of immigrants whose extent is past computing by the 
casual observer, and here the motley pageant of the streets 
when children of so many lands are playing in the sun- 
shine has throughout a rare fascination. The self-con- 
sciousness of the Anglo-Saxon child is alien to the 
temperament in the slums, and one sees these foreign 
children dancing with rare unconscious grace or singing 
with real melody the street songs. But beneath this 



40 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

picturesqueness lies the problem of poverty and over- 
crowding, looking confidently to the " marvellous alchemy '* 
of the Republic for solution. The day nurseries, the 
kindergartens, the free soup-kitchens, and diet and medical 
dispensaries do much to save the lives of the slum babies, 
and a recent enterprise in this quarter has proved of great 
salvation to the type of "tough child." This is the 
Children's Theatre. Starting as a " class in action and in 
speech " for these foreign children, their interest is held by 
disguising the English lesson in the study of the best 
play which they later produce on the stage of their own. 
These temperamental New-American children have 
absorbed this instruction as dry sands absorb rain, and their 
performance of "Prince and Pauper" and even Shake- 
spearian roles have been most creditable ; and the youngsters, 
who one day may be called upon to be star and the next 
to perform the duties of scene-shifter, are as enthusiastic as 
any Broadway manager or performer. These are children 
who work as hard as any adult in the daytime, and the 
way in which they slough off the drab atmosphere of the 
sweat-shop and cellar and step into this mimic world of 
refined manners and speech is most touching. Beneath 
there goes on the great work of inspiring them with new 
ideals and inculcating morality, besides teaching them 
excellent deportment and affording them opportunities, 
otherwise unattainable, of cultivating literary taste and 
learning to speak English with precision and flexibility. 
It is unique rescue work. 

There is a system of " Settlement Work " carried on 
among these children of the " melting pot " in American 
cities — houses dedicated as club-centres and creches, 
in the midst of tenement districts, the managers living 
there and taking every way of keeping themselves in 
touch with the children of the poor. There are " college 
settlements " where graduates from the women's and 
men's universities go to live and have their theoretic 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 41 

knowledge of humanitarian work sadly shaken and revised. 
One can be taught much about the wisdom and unwisdom 
of sociological enthusiasm by one small citizen. There 
was one " Ikey," I remember, a reclaimed little vagrant 
from the East Side (New York's Whitechapel), and in his 
adoption for the summer by two dear maiden ladies from 
a small town in New England, Ikey was made to feel him- 
self an object of as great importance as the returned 
prodigal. The President was making a political tour of 
New England that summer, and Ikey was taken by his 
guardians into the city to hear the great man speak. 
After\^iard, some well-meaning enthusiast made it possible 
for the child of the tenements to grasp the hand of the 
chief executive of the nation, and Ikey's bulletin of the 
proceeding reached the Settlement House in New York 
on a post-card as follows : " The President have met me. 
He don't wear no crown and looks just like a plain clothes 
man (ununiformed policeman) in our ward." 

There is held every year at Washington a national 
Mothers' Congress to discuss the care of children, but of 
its effectiveness I am not prepared to speak ; the only 
session I ever witnessed being quite an accidental attend- 
ance, when, having sought a bachelor senator for interview, 
I found him sitting up with some score of very elderly 
ladies, solemnly watching a pretty professional nurse go 
through the evolutions of infant tubbing with a French 
doll. But there is a strong effort being made to incorporate 
a Children's Bureau as a branch of the Federal Government, 
and if carried out along the suggested line, it should result 
in the emancipation and the supervision of child labour as 
effectively as the " Children's Charter " in England. 

The greatest good that is being done for the children 
of the poor in America at the present time is through the 
juvenile courts now established in every large city. 
America, with the other nations, has come to realize that it 
is wiser and less expensive to save children than to punish 



42 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

criminals, and before this tribunal are brought all the 
children who require institutional care and custody and 
discipline, either by reason of physical defect or delinquency. 
Children are no longer committed for their misdemeanours 
to the jail with adult criminals to be dragged to their level. 
They appear before the children's judge and, for first 
offence, even of stealing, they are on probation ; that is, 
they are to report to the judge twice a month for a year, 
six months, or any stated period, and are visited by the 
" probation officers " in their homes. The judges of these 
juvenile courts may exercise their personal judgment as 
in no other court in the United States, and the trials 
generally consist of a fatherly talk by the judge to the 
small offender. A morning in one of these courts would 
bring tears from the stony-hearted ; yet, in contrast to the 
old police-court scenes, where misguided youth was herded 
with hardened and brutal law-breakers and the whole 
swept from the dock to the penitentiary, there is a note of 
optimism about the children's court, a feeling that the 
divine fire of youth, however choked with murky criminal 
tendencies, might be restored to these little prisoners. I 
recently sat through a session on the bench with one of 
these judges, who was as surely raised up to help these 
submerged children fight for honourable citizenship as any 
general to protect the nation in a righteous cause. Some 
forty or fifty boys and girls, all under seventeen years — 
the maximum age for this court's jurisdiction — were called 
for cases varying from assault upon a parent and petty 
larceny to the boy who had himself come to appear against 
a dishonest employer ; for the children's rights are protected 
by the court as well as their misdeeds judged. It was the 
saddest band of children I have ever seen. It was not the 
youth the poets sing of; and a child without buoyancy 
and innocence is an exquisite painting smeared. But the 
judge's voice was at once tender and stern as he leaned 
across his table to question and warn, counsel or sentence 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 43 

each of these forlorn little souls. Some he sent to the 
reform school, some were dispatched for physical examina- 
tion — for the physician works with the judge — but most 
of them he sent paroled " on their honour," and with a 
hand-clasp which seemed to hearten the cowed youth in 
these children from the alleys and crowded tenements. 

One youngster's sole offence lay in a yielding to the 
ivanderlust. He had wandered from another city, where 
the head of the Reform School informed the judge he was 
not wanted back. This judge had discovered in his first 
confidential talk that the boy longed to be a soldier, to 
play in a military band. He could play a horn it 
developed. So the judge had petitioned the commander 
at the marine barracks that he be given a trial. But the 
boy had returned this morning. He looked sullenly across 
the judge's desk. " He won't take me. Says I'm a bad 
character," he mumbled. 

" Well, you're not. I'd stake my life on that, John," 
said the judge. " You've the making of a splendid fighter 
in you. Now, I'm going to send you to the National 
Training School — they've got a band there, and if you're 
good you can play in it, and in a couple of years you 
can begin as a soldier with a good record." 

The boy straightened his shoulders as he shook hands 
with the judge, and it certainly looked as if a vagabond had 
been transformed into a future defender for Uncle Sam. 

Germany has recently sent judges to America to 
investigate this juvenile court system with a view to its 
adoption, but America may well consider Germany's 
excellent preventive measures, where, instead of waiting 
until the boy or girl has broken the law to give them the 
discipline of the Reform School, youth is controlled by 
compulsory apprenticeship after the school age. But as 
America has been sought by a goodly proportion of her 
present population to avoid just such regulation of indi- 
vidual rights, the juvenile courts will in all probability 



44 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

continue alone to cope with the problem of American 
minors* conduct and crime. 

The young children of the poor are saved from the 
blazing pavements and damp cellar ways in the summer 
by refuge in the public playgrounds which are established 
in open spaces throughout large cities. Kindergarten 
teachers in charge of the swings, sand-piles, ladders, and 
other paraphernalia of amusement, insure the safety of the 
little tots, and clay modelling and sewing are taught. The 
children from these playgrounds at the end of a season will 
often look as healthy and sun-browned as the army of 
well-to-do youngsters returning from a summer at the sea- 
shore or mountains. The average American child, from 
the homes of the rich or the poor, is stalwart above the 
average of other nations. 

One can hardly leave generalizations on the American 
child without reference to the child in the South, for there 
are found the most fascinating and the most unfortunate 
types — the light and shadow of the child problem. The 
children of the well-to-do household in the South are 
children of Nature just as far as it is possible in a civilized 
country. They live an outdoor life much more thoroughly 
than the children in the North. They are given over as 
babies to the care of a coloured nurse or " mammie," and 
she exists for nothing except the cherishing of her particular 
charge. In many instances she has been nurse to the 
mother in her baby days and still calls her " Miss Nellie " 
or " Miss Betty," as the case may be. Coloured nurses work 
for very little pay in the South, and the " mammie " will 
generally have assistants if the family of children is large, 
and it is, as a rule, in the South. These " mammies " tell 
wonderful stories in which animals talk and bogies stalk 
(the folk-lore of the Afro-American), and the white children 
become as imaginative as the negroes who guard them, 
which is saying that theirs is a Wordsworthian childhood 
compared to the literalness with which the child in the 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 45 

Northern States views life. The Southern child does not 
eat at the table with his parents, and if it is true that its 
diet runs riot under the indulgent *' mammie," the sunshine 
and freedom of the home " yard " (Southern houses are 
detached, even when not the centre of an estate, as in the 
ante-bellum days) would seem to counteract the ill effects 
of coffee and hot bread. 

These children are to all appearances wild as March 
hares, and very shy on first acquaintance, but they have the 
most charming, quaint manners instilled by the " mammie " 
— a " mammie " coaching her court of youngsters in fine 
manners is as funny a sight as one could find — and with 
their drawling inflection and really poetic, if weird, view of 
nature, which they get from the negro servants, they are 
most fascinating little individuals. They run about in 
pinafores all day — a Southern "mammie" looks askance 
at the "rompers" or bloomer suits of cotton drilling that 
Northern children wear, as a garment for her "little ladies " 
— and are only dressed up in the late "evening" (Southern 
for afternoon) when they go for a drive and, later, to visit 
with their parents. One Southern mother told me that she 
figured hardly at all in her children's lives until they were 
old enough to be sent away to school. When the last baby 
was born, it was handed as usual over to the family 
" mammie," and when it was a few months old, the mother 
went to Europe with her husband, who was called on 
business, and did not return until the child had passed its 
first birthday. The meeting between mother and baby 
was effusive on the mother's part, but screamingly resent- 
ful on the part of the infant. " Don't you know mother ? " 
the parent reproached, as the baby regarded her suspiciously 
from the haven of its " mammie's " arms. " Lor', Miss 
Florence," exclaimed the old darkey, propitiatingly, " what 
dis yer child know about dis yer mother business, 
anyhow ? " 

Side by side with these happy little aristocrats under the 



46 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

conscientious care of their " mammies," one must regretfully 
put the picture of the saddest child-life in America, the 
children of the " poor white trash " as they are designated 
by even their negro neighbours. Their condition is a blot 
on Uncle Sam's shield. Formerly living in mountain 
cabins under most primitive conditions, speaking a sort of 
Anglo-Saxon dialect with curious survival of certain 
Elizabethan forms, they have answered the call of the 
factory owner in the South's industrial revolution, and 
crowded about the manufactury nucleus, living in rabbit- 
warren style, too insanitary and indecent for the negro to 
accept, and sending even the babies to work in the factories. 
A child of six was recently found holding her snuff stick 
between her milk teeth as her baby hands cleaned a loom. 
These "poor white " children are a pitiable sight ; diseased 
of " hook worm " — what scientists call the " American 
murderer " — and their " tummies " bloated from a diet of 
bad fruit and starvation until they almost push their emaci- 
ated little bodies over backward, it is almost a mercy that 
they are, as some one has said, " railroaded from the cradle 
to the grave." One cannot look at a child of the "poor 
white " class of the South without sinking to one's knees 
before Uncle Sam in petition for a universal child labour 
law. 

Economic fallacy that slavery was, I have it on the 
unimpeachable testimony of a coloured cook, long in my 
service, that " black nigger chilluns ain't never ben so 
happy sence dat War." I know it is a fearful confession 
that one consults one's cook on anything beyond her 
ability to prepare certain dishes and the state of the flour 
barrel, but any one who has an opportunity to listen to an 
ex-slave tell of life on the plantation in the slave days 
of America, and of master's ways, and the War in the 
South, and neglects it, misses something of atmosphere 
which passes fiction or history. It was a luxurious life, 
according to her telling, that the little " pickaninnies " of 



4 



THE AMERICAN CHILD 47 

the slave quarters led. They tumbled about the cabin 
enclosure like happy little animals, stuffing themselves 
with fried bacon and corn-cake until they were six or 
eight years old, when they went with the older negroes 
detailed for domestic service, up to the " big house." 

" What work could a baby eight years old do ? " I asked. 

"Why, tic the white chilluns shoes, bresh de white 
chilluns hair, and fotch and carry fo' em, and den " — she 
rolled her eyes at the memory — " set with the white 
chilluns nights twell they went to sleep. Many a night I 
sat there, too, more scared of the bogie-man than the 
white chillun," she chuckled, " but powerful proud jus' de 
same, to be tending de sperrets away from de white chilluns. 
'Cos / had a good master," she always finishes, " but I'm 
tellin' de truf when I declar it would 'a ben a heap better 
for de black nigger chilluns if slave days were yet." 

My old coloured cook's words recurred to me on a late 
trip through the South. In one community at dusk, 
coloured children were pouring out of a mill and toiling 
along with the lagging squads of their elders. The little 
hands were not tying '* white chilluns' " shoes now, nor wide 
eyes watching for hob-goblins, but in the mill and field 
they work, little early versions of stunted maturity with 
the grim message of under-nourishment and pain written 
on their pinched features. A negro father, himself crippled 
from an accident in the mill, standing in the doorway of 
his shack, followed my eyes as they took in the scene, and 
then he repeated, in that musical, whimsical cadence of the 



I head de chillun readin' 

'Bout de worl' a turnin' roun', 
Till my head gits sorter dizzy 

As I Stan' upon de groun' : 
But let her keep a turnin' 

Ef 'twill bring a better day, 
When a man can mek a iivin', 

While his chillun learn an' play." 



CHAPTER III 

SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND 
UNIVERSITIES 

THERE are, it is estimated, twenty-four million 
children from 5 to i8 years in the United States, 
and seventeen million of them are enrolled in the 
public schools. Each State in the Union has a public 
school system of its own, supported by funds derived from 
its own resources, and administered by officers chosen in 
accordance with its own laws. The value of all school 
property belonging to the public school system was 
;f 171,731,942 in 1909. The revenue for school purposes 
for the year was ;^7 1,003,23 3, and the expenditure was 
^67,339,666. 

But a glimpse at the streets of any American city 
between half-past eight and nine in the morning reveals 
the popularity of public education better than statistics. 
On five days in the week the streets in the middle class 
and even the well-to-do sections of our cities are as lively 
with children as the poorer districts, and all are on their 
way to " public school." For public schools in America 
mean elementary common schools, and correspond to the 
Board schools of Great Britain, except that they draw 
perhaps half their patronage from the class of children who 
in England would be sent to private day and boarding 
schools. 

48 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 49 

Everything is free in the American public schools — texL- 
books, paper, and pencils as well as the instruction, but 
there is no sense of charity ; the American parent regards 
free education as much a matter of course as the street 
lamps and policemen. The son of the President attends 
public school and the son of an immigrant is entered in a 
public school, in his section of the city before he can speak 
English, while between the children from all classes go. 

From homes of comparative luxury you will see mere 
toddlers clamber down front steps and scamper off as 
independent as squirrels, to take their place in the kinder- 
garten or lowest grades (forms) of the public schools. 
Young girls, who in European cities would be sent forth in 
charge of governesses or upper servants, hurry along 
unattended, swinging a strapful of books in boyish fashion, 
while boys and girls together (co-education is practically 
universal in the public schools) whiz by on bicycles chatter- 
ing like magpies. There may be an automobile or carriage 
standing before the homes of a fair proportion of these 
children, but it is to take the father to his place of business, 
and, later, mother to market and the shops. Their children 
ignore the family conveyance as they hurry off. 

f A confirmed bachelor once remarked to me that it 

inspired him more than a military parade just to stand on 

a street corner and watch ''the twinkling by of black and 

brown stockings on the many sturdy legs, or the hobbling 

1 of a long line of umbrellas held over the many independent 

' little heads of these hardy youngsters as they make their 

; transit from comfortable homes to the public schools." 

1 " Yes, indeed," I urged enthusiastically, " and think how 

' remarkable that the President's son " (this was in Washing- 

I ton) " is in that school over there, probably sitting between 

I the boy of a small salaried Government clerk and the 

I daughter of a seamstress." 

I " Of course ; why not ? " he replied calmly, being an 
I American. \ 



so HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

In New York, to be sure, where the residence streets in 
the better parts so often run down at the heel into squalor 
at the end of " a square begun in eminent respectability," 
and the attendance at any school is likely to be rather a 
trying composite of nationality and even race, private 
schools are often given preference by families moderately 
well off. On the other hand, in Boston it is considered a 
confession of mental backwardness if a child is withdrawn 
from public education and sent to private school. Through- 
out the South there are, of course, separate schools for the 
negroes with coloured teachers, and usually there is a 
coloured representative on the Board of Education or 
school board. 

In the "slum" districts of our large cities, a three cent, 
lunch of broth, bread, and milk is served, and in New 
York's " East Side," where it was recently discovered that 
half the children were sent to school breakfastless, a free 
meal is given every youngster who presents himself before 
school hours. 

But otherwise, there is no distinction wherever these 
elementary schools are found. Every effort is made to 
keep the buildings, equipment, method of instruction, and 
subjects uniform. So similar does the visiting foreigner 
find whatever number of these 259,355 public schools he 
happens on in going over the country, that it is a common 
error to regard us as having a national system of education, 
at least partly supported by the general Government. But 
each State is responsible for its public schools. 

The salaries of teachers in the public schools of the 
United States, as in all other educational lines here, are 
disproportionately small compared to the earnings for 
other work. The average monthly salary of teachers is 
;^io, the average for men in those States making a sex 
classification being £\2, and for women £(^. Naturally the 
percentage of men in this profession has steadily dropped 
until the male teachers represent twenty-one per cent, of 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 51 

the total number. The young women teaching even the 
lowest common school grades must have completed a high 
school course or the equivalent, and had, generally, two 
years in a Normal School or training school for teachers. 

I have heard it said that the American passion for 
ice-cream and candy finds its counterpart in our school- 
room methods, but this will appear somewhat ironic to any 
one who has watched the drilling of an average class of 
from forty to sixty pupils in a public school, presided over 
by an earnest young woman who knows that the young 
barbarians in her charge must master the stipulated amount 
of reading, writing, and arithmetic and do her credit before 
the supervisor allotted to her school, or her monthly stipend 
I will cease. There is little time for sugar-coating multiplica- 
, tion tables and spelling, and in this wholesale training of 
I the elemental public school young America becomes 
1 splendidly grounded in its first studies. 
I There are eight grades, or forms, in these public schools, 
1 the average child entering at six or seven years of age, 
[ though the kindergartens admit at four. The course does 
not include any modern foreign language, and the classics 
' are not begun before the first grade in the high school. An 
I average of fifteen years of age is late to introduce the 
I classics into instruction which is to lead to a university or 
I college course, and it would seem as if some of the sciences 
' — botany and physiology and mineralogy in a diluted form 
' are taucrht in the common schools — miirht be omitted in 
' favour of Latin and Greek. But the public school course 
j is of necessity a compromise, since with many of the poorer 
I pupils education stops at fourteen or fifteen, and the " every- 
' day things " are given first choice. There is no universal 
law of compulsory education in the United States, but 
I almost every State has crystallized its views on the subject 
I in regulations requiring school attendance for both sexes 
] between the ages of six and fourteen, although six to 
I twelve is not unusual. 



52 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Better illustrations of the practical in our public educa- 
tion are found in the cooking-lessons given the girls by 
special teachers and the manual training provided for the 
boys. Drawing and water-colour-work are also taught, and 
of late in the large cities the stereotyped calisthenics in 
the physical culture classes of the public schools have 
resolved themselves into the steps of the folk dances of 
different nationalities. An amusing incident in this con- 
nexion is given by the young woman at the head of this 
branch of instruction in New York. '* I saw an announce- 
ment in a newspaper once," she said, *' that the Hungarians 
of the East Side were going to give a native feast with 
native dancing afterward. I thought I might get some 
points, so I went. And when the feast was over and the 
dancing was to begin, a group of children, whose teachers I 
myself had taught, came and did the dance as I myself had 
taught it. And all the patriarchs sat around and patted 
their hands in time to the music and nodded approval. 
Then it turned out that these Hungarian children were the 
only ones on the East Side who knew their own native folk 
dance, and they had learned it in an American public 
school ! While that very morning," she continued, *' I 
received a note from an * uptown ' matron asking me to 
superintend a group of folk dances to be given for sweet 
charity's sake in her drawing-room by her little daughter 
and other comfort-born small Americans who also had 
learned to dance in the public schools ! " 

The lower grades of the public schools are a democracy 
and a cosmopolis, but in the high schools class distinc- 
tions are apparent, and there is less co-education. There 
are in every city " technical high schools " where boys are 
taught a trade and girls learn dressmaking, millinery, and 
interior decorating ; " business high schools," where boys 
and girls are taught stenography, typewriting, business 
terms, and business methods — as they exist in theory ! — 
and the "classical high schools," where the four years' 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 53 

course includes Latin, Greek, and French or German, 
rhetoric and mathematics and zoology, botany or chemistry ; 
and the standard of these schools is acknowledged to the 
extent of allowing their graduates to enter a majority of 
colleges and universities on certificate — that is, without 
examination. 

This higher education is taken advantage of only by 
the children of the middle class — the great middle class 
which constitutes, however much foreign attention focuses 
on the spectacular contrast of poverty and wealth, the mass 
of American citizenship. The poor man's family are 
breadwinners after the elementary grades and the rich 
man, or even the moderately well-to-do, while he endorses 
democratic principles in early education, seldom continue 
the object-lesson beyond his child's tenth birthday. The 
boys of this class are then entered in a private day school 
or tutored at home until they are sent away to schools 
corresponding to the public schools of England, or in 
many cases they live at home until ready to enter 
college. 

The Eton and Harrow, and Rugby and Winchester and 
Shrewsbury of America, are Phillips-Exeter in New 
Hampshire and Phillips-Andover in Massachusetts — they 
have the same founder, and are the keenest rivals among 
all secondary schools — Groton in Massachusetts, and St. 
Paul's in New Hampshire, Lawrenceville in New Jersey, 
and Tome Institute in Maryland. 

: These are known as " Preparatory Schools " — " prep " 
i schools — which expresses at once the point of greatest 
I divergence from their English models, for preparatory 
schools for the universities they are first and foremost. It 
is the university course to follow upon which all emphasis 
I is laid, so that the " prep " school is regarded as a mere 
j transition phase to be scurried through as fast as possible. 
I The American boy does not go to these schools until he is 
I fifteen or sixteen years old, and as he is supposed to be 



54 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

ready to enter college at nineteen, his fund of information 
in the required studies must be a rapid crop. The masters 
in these schools are there to accomplish this " cramming " 
process, and the boy regards the course as a means to the 
great end of becoming a Harvard man or a Yale or 
Princeton " undergrad." The masters themselves consider 
their work in these secondary schools as a stepping-stone 
to positions on some college faculty. 

The large preparatory schools are beset with applica- 
tions greatly in excess of their vacancies, and a goodly 
number of American fathers now turn from the doctor^s 
announcement that " It is a fine boy " to enter immediately 
that son's name at the school in which the father made his 
own college preparation. But to find a third generation 
representative in any of the well-known " prep " schools is 
unusual. That certain well-defined and fixed quality of 
atmosphere into which a boy is thrust when he enters one 
of the English public schools and the distinctive mark of 
which is expected to be seen when he leaves the school, 
has not evolved in the American "prep" school. The 
youthfulness of America may preclude the possibility, but 
the desirability is plain. 

The American boy will have acquired, in alLprobability, 
more text-book knowledge than the English, but his 
development otherwise will depend entirely upon the 
"set" in which he has moved, there being no general 
traditional standard of conduct about the school, and the 
cardinal regulations against smoking, drinking, and the 
" cutting " of recitations are too much on the order of 
" reform school " rule to make for character, growth and 
manliness. 

The American boy runs the hazard of coming out a 
snob, a molly-coddle, or an immature schoolboy, according 
to what his small circle of companionship happens to have 
been, but he will be mentally equipped to take the com- 
prehensive tests for entrance to his chosen university. The 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 55 

English boy leaves the public school, I should say, above 
all, a man in character and well-drilled in the classics, with 
a few other studies as side issues. 

An English boy once said to me, " I like the boys 
from the States, but I do think they're a little soft, you 
know." 

*'Soft" in American vernacular means an excess of 
manner, an over-evident, effeminate air of culture, and of 
this the American boy could never be judged guilty, so I 
questioned further. 

" Oh, I only meant — well, whipping and birching does 
a fellow a lot of good, you know," he replied, for he was 
Eton, and a nice boy. 

I reflected what the righteous indignation of the 
American parent would be if caning and birching were 
introduced as disciplinary measures into our **prep" 
schools. A whipping administered by a master would 
undoubtedly result in the withdrawal of many pupils 
while to have a young boy thrashed by an elder one, 
perhaps publicly, and with the approval of the masters, is 
almost beyond American conception. And yet there is 
our " hazing," more like torture for torture's sake than the 
almost codified physical discipline of Eton and Harrow, 
to which the new-comer to our "prep" schools is always 
subjected. 

To be sure some of these trials are of a burlesque 
character, and more likely to test the victim's nerve than 
do him any real injury. Tipping him blind-folded out of 
a boat on the school lake after much circuitous paddling 
in the darkness, with the parting injunction, " Pull for the 
shore," when, eyes free, he discovers himself to be 
heroically struggling in three feet of water, is a fair sample. 
Hoisting him to sit astride an equestrian statue in the 
town, and then urging his graceful descent while his head 
remains bound in a cloth bag, is another. 

A boy who has passed through his initiation into 



56 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

"prep" school life will never "squeal," and the masters 
take care to sleep with their deaf ears uppermost on these 
nights of stealthy revel, so that unless pneumonia or a 
broken limb result, the details are unrevealed. 

I once violated the rule of " no questions asked " in 
regard to the boy near me, at home for his first holidays, 
but he extenuated bravely — 

" It wasn't so bad ! And then I heard a church clock 
strike two away off somewhere, and I knew it couldn't last 
much longer because it would be daylight." 

"Where were you ? " I asked. 

" Oh, up on the mountain with the * middlers ' " (upper 
class boys) " making a trained sea-lion of me in the 
brook ! " he laughed. 

The " mountain " was over two miles from the school, I 
knew, and the lautumn frostiness in New England hills is 
as bone-searching as January fog in London ; but I said 
nothing, for I had been assured that " hazing " was a sure 
cure for "freshness" (cheekiness), with which, in a malignant 
form, every new boy is presupposed to be afflicted ; and 
who would want the boy dear to them to remain unre- 
generate in the eyes of his fellows at " prep " ? 

As at Eton and Harrow, after the new boy has been 
duly admitted and assigned to his room in a " house " with 
anywhere from ten to forty other boys, his first task is to 
learn the school language. The sweet shop is the "jigger 
store," for there is sold the syrup-flavoured soda water 
which is a "jigger," or a " double jigger" if a lump of ice- 
cream is added. 

The boy who endeavours palpably to shine in the 
class-room is a " prod " — short for " prodigy " — and a term 
of deep contempt. To study is " to bone." 

A boy inclined to favour the society of visiting sisters 
is called a "fusser." 

A translation of a classical text is a " trot " ; to use it 
is " to crib." To be restricted to the school grounds for 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 57 

punishment is " to be campussed," and so forth, until it 
requires a glossary to get in touch with your boys' 
conversation. 

Some of the preparatory schools have been lavishly 
endowed, but most of the endowment would appear to 
have been confined to the fine buildings and their equip- 
ment, for the salaries of the professors are not remarkable. 
A head master receives from ;£'8oo to £1200 a year, while 
the masters are seldom paid more than ;^32o. The 
perquisites of the head master vary. In some of the 
schools he is merely given his house ; in others the house 
will be handsomely furnished, it will be heated, and his 
servants paid and a carriage put at his disposal. " In 
fact," said the wife of the " principal " (head master) of one 
of these large schools, " we get everything free — except 
my millinery." 

A popular variety of the preparatory school is the 
" Military Academy " ; but it is not, as might be supposed, 
for the purpose of coaching candidates for West Point — 
the national Army College, but merely to give the physical 
advantages and the discipline of a soldier's training to 
boys regardless of future specialization. 

They have a daily drill under the direction of an army 
officer, wear cadet uniforms, go off on long marches, 
" pitching " and " striking " camp each day, and are given 
target practice. They arise to the reveill^ and have 
sham battles and usually manage a big gun or two to 
salute distinguished visitors. The classroom work is much 
the same as in the ordinary preparatory school, and a 
number of the graduates enter college. The majority go 
back home and into business, while here and there a boy 
enamoured of the soldier's life will seek an appointment at 
West Point. 

In almost every State there are one or two of these 
private military schools, and there is much to be said for 
this all-round physical training, in contrast with the 



58 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

abnormal local strain of muscles that a boy in training for 
an " event " in school athletics puts upon his immature 
young organism. 

f^^ But the college is the thing in America. Small 
colleges spring up like wheat, and, like the United States 
wheat crop, they have flourished. The present epidemic 
of college education is the subject of much serious con- 
cern and more humour in our press. You will find it 
severely stated : " Our educational pyramid has been 
stood upon its apex, and we have been endeavouring to 
adorn the attic before the foundations were firmly laid ; 
the law of supply and demand has been applied to the 
college and ignored in the preparatory schools." In the 
same paper, on another page you will not unlikely find a 
semi-facetious anecdote, which was fastened upon a certain 
man of wealth, the owner of a great steel plant. A 
reporter doing the inevitable interview asked — 

" Of course you are a college man, Mr. Blank ? " 

" Not me ; but my head porter's a college man, and so's 
one of my oldest teamsters, and I know all our lady typists 
are, and I believe our new elevator man is too." i 

There are in the United States 573 univeTsities and 
colleges, of which 487 charge for tuition, and 86 are 
free. Some of these have preparatory departments, and 
including these with the collegiate graduate and pro- 
fessional departments, there is a total enrolment of some- 
thing over 300,000 students. But this, compared to the 
85,000,000 population is, after all, not calculated to inspire 
fear of the "educated proletariat" Bismarck attributed to 
Germany. 

Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia Universities 
are in a class by themselves. They alone can be compared 
with the universities abroad, and in a generalizing com- 
parison, I should say that there is less of the Bohemian, 
the social vagabondage element, in the student life here, 
and decidedly less maturity of mental attitude. The 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 59 

university student in America is a mischievous boy in 
spirit, who still believes whom the gods hate they make a 
pedagogue, therefore every conceivable prank for his 
discomfiture is to be indulged in. No one connected 
with the university escapes their raillery. Dr. Charles 
Eliot, recently resigned as president of Harvard, laughingly 
tells of his failure to live up to his name in the students* 
estimation. When he was a young tutor in the university, 
he was starting out one evening on his inspection rounds, 
and heard some one give the warning : " Here comes old 
Eliot ! "and a short time ago, when a grey-haired college 
president of thirty years' standing, he passed a group of 
students, one of them whispered, '* I wonder where 
Charlie is bound to-night ! " 

Yet there is a receptive and uncritical attitude toward 
the knowledge a professor dispenses in a class-room ; 
there exists an almost childlike belief in his intellectual 
authority. The average student is both serious and 
systematic about his work, but it is the work of industrious 
mediocrity. The undergraduate life at an English uni- 
versity seems sadly haphazard to the American college 
professor, while the active criticism, the original research, 
and sceptical inquiry of the German student is only found 
here among graduate scholars. The American student 
absorbs thoroughly, but he becomes, as some one has said, 
"a live wire, not a dynamo." We do not as yet seem to 
have grasped the university calibre in the quality of our 
work. To Americans the punctilio of the German student 
duel seems absolutely absurd, yet there is surprising 
breadth and independence of work done by the individual 
German student outside the lecture-room. If I may be 
permitted a very Western bit of slang, the German 
university student "does his thinking in his own tank" ; 
the American student faithfully takes the professor's 
" say so." 

In athletics, which are as much a part of the university 



6o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

as its curriculum, there is as yet a somewhat too feverish 
atmosphere in our training ; too much regard for the one 
game or competition and the prize directly ahead of the 
student, and not enough provision for his ultimate 
development. The American athlete specializes, and 
even the position he is to play in the football eleven will 
be determined and trained for in the " prep " school, so 
that the all-round athlete is rare in America, and the 
cases of physical wreckage attributable to over-strain are 
not as rare as one might pray for. 

To excel in some athletic event, to win a trophy for his 
university in the inter-collegiate " meets," or to lead his 
college team to victory on the football field, is the really 
absorbing ambition of every student, and the successful 
athlete is assured of an immediate fame in the eyes of his 
university mates and in the public eye as well, while the 
brilliant student can look to the faculty for approval. It 
is the American choice for worship of the returned naval 
hero over the ink hermit producing a masterpiece. No 
matter what of note or notoriety a university athlete 
may accomplish in after life, his name will always be 
bracketed with his athletic record. "John Smith, Yale's 
famous quarter-back " ; *' Eric Hardinger, Harvard's great 
coach for the '93 crew " ; " William Brown, who held the 
inter-collegiate record for standing broad jump" — these 
appear in the newspapers as prefaces to the announcements 
of legal victories, or election to political office, or even to 
accounts of suicide or breach of trust. * 

The annual Yale-Harvard race becomes a more popular 
occasion every year. The American Henley and Thames 
are fast reaching a degree of brilliancy worthy of com- 
parison with the wonderful water pageant of their prototype 
— the English universities eight-oared race. We have 
the gala throngs, the bunting-decked observation trains 
following the course of the boats, the launches and small 
craft lining the banks aflutter with partisan streamers, and 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 6i 

women and girls in soft-tinted gowns ; but the house-boat, 
as an institution, and the punt as a picturesque feature, are 
not yet fully evolved. 

There is, of course, a noticeable contingent of wealthy 

idlers in the large universities in the United States. There 

are clubs of millionaire students, where the rooms are fitted 

up with the luxury of suites in the best hotels. Some of 

, these men bring a man-servant with them, and a great 

I many have their horses and touring-cars. This, of course, 

does not make for a plutocracy of letters in the universities, 

but, on the other hand, it has not, as might have been 

, expected, materially increased dissipation in student life. 

; Occasionally there appears a rich man's son who is 

j systematic in his aversion to water when champagne is 

] available ; but all accounts of drinking at American 

1 colleges must be largely discounted by the fact that we 

I are an iced-water nation, and any variation from this 

I national beverage is decried with hysterics. The normal 

( beer habit of a German university would produce scores 

of magazine diatribes in this country. 
I The students live in dormitories, or the chapter-houses 
i of the inter-collegiate Greek Letter Societies, or at the 
j "gold spoon" clubs, according to an ascending scale of 
material backing. The lot of the poor student at these 
universities grows constantly harder. Simplicity and 
economy have been on the steady decrease, and the gulf 
between those who can afford the additional demands and 
I those who cannot widens. At each university you will 
have pointed out to you several students who are working 
their way through ; but you will find that they are remark- 
ably gifted young men, whose attendance the university 
considers itself fortunate to have obtained, and whom the 
student body will receive as their own. But no mute in- 
glorious Milton need apply and expect to have anything 
but an ostracized time of it. The average of a student's 
expenditure at Yale last year was ;£^225 ; but I have been 



62 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

assured by students that the least " a fellow can do it on 
decently " — that is, meet all reasonable demands — is ;^300, 
while ^looo is not an unusual expenditure. The actual 
cost of tuition at Yale, as it is at Harvard and Princeton, 
is only £^0, and forms but a small item in the expense of 
the college course. 

At Harvard there are over four thousand students. A 
" Cosmopolitan Club " was formed for the purpose of 
bringing together the foreign-born students of Harvard, 
together with a small percentage of native-born under- 
graduates who have spent at least two years abroad. At 
present Ta Chien Yeh of Sungchiaing is president of the 
club. Last year's most popular football song, sung by 
Harvard men at all the games, was written by a student 
from Munich. An Armenian is one of the best debaters, a 
student from Ouetta is editor-in-chief of the " Harvard 
Advocate," the most important of the undergraduate 
publications; and the best billiard-player in the college 
is Japanese. 

The salaries paid to the presidents and faculty of 
Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Princeton again put those 
universities in a separate class, for in most of the other 
colleges the presidency brings from :^700 to ;^iooo and a 
full professorship often less than ;^240 a year, while the 
heads of the four great universities receive ;£"3000, and the 
salary of a full professorship is usually ;^iooo. Below 
this are associate professors, assistant professors, instructors, 
fellows, and tutors with a careful gradation of salary ; but 
an assistant professorship at Harvard will be as re- 
munerative as a full chair elsewhere. 

It is not easy for the average professor in a small 
college to make ends meet, but the real tragedy of the 
profession is the place his work is ranked in public opinion. 
Compared with other classes in the community, the 
German university professor ranks with important legal 
and administrative officers ; in England there is an 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 63 

acknowledged social standing for men engaged in 
academic pursuits. In the United States the capitalist's 
scorn for the college professor is proverbial, and professors 
from some of the smaller universities have told me that 
even the trustees consider a professor a very poor creature 
indeed, who has chosen his profession presumably because 
of a singular mental deficiency which prevents him from 
setting a proper value on money, and would probably in 
any case prevent him from achieving financial success. 

One of these professors, in speaking enviously of what 
an important personage a professor is in Germany, quoted 
the pinnacle of haughtiness attained by a member of the 
faculty at Heidelberg. One day the authorities of the 
city ordered that the street in front of the professor's house 
should be paved. 

" If you don't stop that noise," remarked the professor 
I to the pavers, " I shall give up my position as a member of 
the Heidelberg faculty." 

The pavers stopped work at once. The municipal 
authorities sent to inquire respectfully of the professor 
when they might pave the street. 

" When I take my vacation," he replied ; and then, and 
only then, was the street paved. 

" I'd like to see a professor in the United States 
accorded that consideration," scoffed the American 
professor at the close of his anecdote. 

To be attached to the faculty of one of the large Eastern 
universities carries a certain prestige, and men will rather 
remain as under professors at Harvard and Yale than 
accept a chair in less well-known institutions. There is no 
Government pension system as there is abroad. After 
long and meritorious service, a professor is at the mercy 
of the trustees and the finances of the college. He may 
be retired as professor emeritus on a fraction of his salary, 
or he may be cast aside like an old glove, unworthy even 
of mending. '1 



64 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

In looking over some questions which had been given 
in the entrance test at one of the best-known English 
Public Schools, I was amazed at the knowledge of the Bible 
expected of the candidates ; for in America the Bible only- 
enters into education in connexion with the Church and 
Sunday-school experiences of youth. All study of the 
Bible as literature or historical narrative is strictly omitted 
in the elementary and secondary schools, unless the latter 
are avowedly denominational. The variety of religious 
creeds throughout the country with conflicting interpre- 
tations of the Scriptures makes Bible study too delicate a 
matter except in the sectarian schools ; and outside the 
parochial schools of the Catholic church there are few of 
these. The tax-payer whose child goes to the common 
school, and the parent paying tuition at a private school, 
alike demand that if the Bible be taught, it must be in 
absolute accord with his particular orthodoxy. So the 
Bible is not taught. The Lord's Prayer used to be recited 
by the pupils in the public schools as an opening exercise ; 
but Catholic parents objected, and the custom was 
abandoned. 

In higher education in the United States, although the 
larger colleges and universities are non-sectarian, there is 
no lack of opportunity for the student seeking the 
atmosphere of his own religious views. Among the 
569 registered colleges outside the four large Eastern 
universities there are colleges founded and supported 
by every creed — Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Roman 
Catholic, Lutheran ; there are colleges under the patronage 
of that quaint sect The Dunkards, and the Quaker 
Society of Friends ; there is even a " Brigham Young 
College," in Utah, officially controlled by the Latter-Day 
Saints. , 

These sectarian colleges often have a "Theological 
Seminary " in connexion, and are the propagating grounds 
for young clergymen of every faith. There is Atlanta 






SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 65 

University, the Harvard or Yale of the negroes ; and 
Carlisle University, for the higher education of the Indian ; 
and Hampton Institute, for both Indians and negroes. 

Then there is the type of university endowed and 
largely supported by one man, as the University of 
Chicago, the swaddling clothes of which cost John D. 
Rockefeller about ;^4,ooo,ooo, with an additional million 
or two as it grew to provide new outfits in the way of 
buildings, equipment, and scholarships ; and the Leland 
Stanford Junior University, that Arabian Nights college 
town in California. 

Senator and Mrs. Stanford, desiring to establish a 
' memorial to their only child, sought an advisory interview 
' with the president of Harvard. 

I "What has the entire plant of Harvard University 
( cost ? " asked Mrs. Stanford. It was explained that it 
would be difficult, almost impossible, to answer that 
I question with precision, because the university had 
, received in two centuries and a half gifts of lands, 
I buildings, books, and apparatus which were not valued 
^ in money either at that time or since ; but he added that 
^ ten or twelve million dollars might be a reasonable 
I valuation. Thereupon Mrs. Stanford said very quietly 
I to her husband, " Then if we should put in five millions 
I now and five millions a year hence we could do some- 
! thing." Her language and manner was not in the least 
1 commercial or boastful. Leland Stanford Junior University 
I has 1500 students enrolled. It is co-educational to the 
extent of limiting the attendance of women students to 
the number of five hundred. 

Almost all Western and Middle West colleges are co- 
educational. In fact, of the 564 universities and colleges 
in the United States, excluding colleges for women alone, 
I 143 are for men only, and 321 are open to both sexes. 
I Some of these prescribe separate recitation rooms for the 
I women students. This is not, however, to prevent the 

F 



66 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

young men and young v/omen from a reasonable kind 
of association, for, as one college president said, "A 
fence which could make any pretence of doing that must 
have its under-pinning in the wet earth, and its pickets in 
the blue arch of heaven," but to prevent the over-balancing 
of one sex in certain courses. Some branches of education 
appeal more to women than to men, and others appeal 
more to men than women, and the colleges that segregate 
the sexes have done so to forestall the disadvantage 
resulting to the minority in the class-room in such cases. 

But in most of our co-educational colleges, in class- 
room and socially, the young women and young men 
have every appearance of being, as the college song 
relates, "jolly good fellows together." I stood with the 
president of one of the largest of these Western universities 
— his undergraduate department offers equal opportunities 
to 1500 men and 1000 women — surveying a students* 
dance given in the great hall of the college gymnasium. 
The polished floor and the pretty frocks of the young 
women gave it the frivolous air of an ordinary ball-room, 
and the president nodded approvingly. 

" There is a lot of sense and not a great deal of 
foolishness about it all " he said. *' These young people 
have many of them no social advantages in the homes 
they come from. The young men wouldn't be profound 
students anyway. And the life here with the competition 
of sex has infinitely more incentive and inspiration than 
a course in a man's small college. This sort of thing 
saves them from being boors, and in point of intellectual 
proficiency there is no noticeable preponderance in one 
sex over the other. The young women are good students, 
yet there is no blue-stocking element to be found here. 
Of course romance sometimes will interfere with the work 
of the lighter-headed ones, but there has never been one 
serious scandal. On the whole, I believe, these young 
women are quite as safe in this environment and 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 67 

atmosphere as in their own homes. All that this atmo- 
sphere is doing for them has as much protection in 
it as the uncertain oversight and slender authority of 
American fathers and mothers at the age when young 
manhood and womanhood has arrived.'* 

"Yes," he added, smiling boyishly, "marriage often 
follows after college days are over ; but it is seldom that 
either party gets a stick or a poltroon without being 
chargeable with notice, for the university sentiment has 
fixed the status of each student beyond peradventure." 

Perhaps the most important factor in the enlargement 
of co-educational college work in America has been the 
State universities, which, like the public schools, are 
without sex discrimination. 

Its " university " is the pride of every State. Westerners 
adore oratory, and it is no uncommon thing for a State 
senator, proposing before the legislature some further 
appropriation for the support of the university, to pro- 
claim their university " The Athens of America," or " the 
world-famed centre of culture and intellect," and to 
believe it. 

The university town itself usually remembers its 
share in the ownership of the university, and there is an 
air of superiority about even the shopkeepers and cab- 
drivers. The streets swarm with young men and women, 
almost all of them having come from within the State. In 
the large State universities, as those of Michigan, Wisconsin, 
or Minnesota, there are between 2500 and 3000 students ; 
in the smaller ones, the average is between three and 
six hundred. The boys at these universities are rarely 
the sons of the rich men of the State, for those are sent 
to large Eastern universities. Some of them are the sons 
of professional and business men, but a large number are 
sons of farmers. The majority of State universities are 
I free ; but even when there is a nominal fee charged, a 
student who can prove his inability to pay is entitled to 



6S HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

free tuition. As to the rest — the bare necessities of livingf — 
they cost the student but little in the college town of the 
State, and there are fires to take care of for the citizens, and 
other employments of a similar nature. One enterprising 
youth, after a year of well-paid wood-chopping and fire 
tending, went away and married. His wife's savings as a 
school teacher stood them in stead during the summer, 
and in the autumn she accompanied him to the university 
— ^not to study with him, but to cook for a club of poor 
students. Each member of the club allowed a small sum 
to the caterer, and on that sum the pair lived, and the 
thrifty husband was able to devote himself single-minded 
to his studies, with no further interruption in the way of 
wood-chopping. He graduated, and report says that 
in a neighbouring town his business sign may now be 
seen : — 

JOHN SMITH, 
Lime, Cement, and Civil Engineering. 

Many of the prominent professional men in each State 
are graduates of its university, for it often comprises a 
school of medicine and of dentistry, a technical school, and 
sometimes a department of law. And always there is the 
" Agricultural College." 

Theoretically, the agricultural college is for the training 
of scientific farmers, and while the American farmer is as 
a rule sceptical of any knowledge except what he calls 
" hard sense " in dealing with his crops, he likes to have his 
calling recognized as a department in the State university. 
The title of " agricultural college " commends itself to an 
agricultural community, and State and national legislators 
court popularity with their constituents in securing funds 
and land grants for this branch of the State's educational 
plant. 

The agricultural college always has an elaborate and 
picturesque outfit. There is its experimental farm, its 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 69 

dairies, its veterinary department, and its department of 
domestic science for women. But in practice the agri- 
cultural college does not have many students in agri- 
culture. The farmers' sons who go to college rarely 
count on going back to the farm ; but they accept a course 
at the agricultural college as a compromise against 
seeking higher education under the parental ban. So, 
gradually, duplicate courses of those in the regular 
classical department of the State university have crept 
into the curriculum of the agricultural college, and the 
farmer's son is scanning Horatian metres instead of 
learning the effect of phosphates on the soil. 

The faculty of almost every State university contains 
scholars of surprising worth. Some of the professors will 
be natives of the State, perhaps a majority of them are 
Western men by birth, but most of them have been 
educated according to modern methods. Many, indeed, 

I are graduates of Eastern colleges and universities, and 
nearly all have taken their year, or two or three years, in 
foreign universities. The others come from all parts of 

\ the country, and; a few from Europe. This is the more 
surprising, since it is a matter of record that the best a 
professor may nominally hope to obtain in a State 
university is, at the age of twenty-eight, a salary of ;£"250 ; 

j at thirty-one, a salary of ;£"35o ; at thirty. three, a salary of 
;f 450, and at thirty-five — at which age the able man will 

I have gained his professorship — a salary of ;^500. 

] The burden of any State university's success rests with 

1 its president. Besides discharging his manifold duties as 
the executive head, he travels about the State making 

! addresses at high school commencements, at teachers' 
associations, at every kind of educational gathering. 
These journeys are not optional, and they must be made 
( out of his slender salary. It is " drumming up trade " for 
I the university, and forms as much a portion of the work 
I the president assumes when he accepts his position as 



70 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

interviewing angry fathers of suspended students or acting 
as the medium of communication between the board of 
regents and his professors. 

The Methodist bishop has long been the American 
symbol of itinerant hardship, but the travels of a State 
university president over a large State resemble in their 
vicissitudes those of a missionary bishop, with some 
advantage on the side of the latter. 

The president and a bishop in a Western State were 
once comparing notes. 

"What do you do, bishop, when you have only one 
sheet to your bed ? " 

"I double it," replied the bishop, "and get inside." 
" But suppose they put another man in the same bed ? " 
" That," said the bishop, " hasn't yet happened to me." 
As for the women at the State university, what 
impresses an impartial observer is their extraordinary 
independence. Here is the free and easiest type of co- 
education in all chaperonless America. It is rare indeed 
for a father or mother to come with a daughter to see that 
she is suitably lodged and properly started in her uni- 
versity life. In some of the State universities the dormitory 
system prevails, but quite as generally the students are 
expected to find lodgings about the town, and usually 
lodging and boarding are in different houses. So, 
ordinarily, the girl student finds her own quarters and 
manages her own affairs — her goings and comings, her 
hours, her companions are at her own disposal. 

Sometimes she is a serious student ; frequently she is 
clever enough to hold her own extremely well in her 
classes ; but apparently she is more apt than her brother 
to come to the university for the fun of it. 

It is true that in spite of her freedom the girl usually 
escapes without having fallen below her own standard of 
decorum. But her standard of thoughtlessness, I have 
sometimes thought, permits a good deal. 



SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES 71 

A professor once told me that it was not an infrequent 
occurrence at his university to meet men and women 
students on their way to take a row on the river as late as 
half-past ten at night after a meeting of their literary 
societies, and as a sample of harmless freedom it seemed to 
him entirely laudable. 

But the women in State universities and other co- 
educational colleges give little idea of the type of American 
college women in a college town of her own. 






CHAPTER IV 
TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 

BACKFISCH, the colloquial German term for a girl in 
her earliest teens, would not be applicable to the 
American young person. For with all her undeni- 
able charm of health and poise and splendid camaraderie, 
the American young person suggests not the slightest 
analogy to a small fresh fish so recently removed from 
early obscurity that the glistening sheen of the sea-hues is 
still upon it. In the first place, the average young person 
in America has no unconscious childhood to emerge from. 
The close companionship of American fathers and mothers 
with their children has that unfortunate result. The brains 
and emotions of the youngsters are stimulated until more 
or less unconsciously they are expected to think the 
thoughts and feel the impulses of their parents instead of 
the natural childlike thoughts and impulses which are 
mostly instincts. Instead of being allowed to run along 
on their own level the children are continually being forced 
up an inclined plane to a higher level, doubtless, but they 
would reach it in good time without compulsion if they 
were left alone. 

We resented it when a well-known English investigator 
of economic and social conditions left us with the calm 
declaration : " There are no children in America. You 
have little women and big women, little men and big men ; 
but you have no children — not in the English or the 

72 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 73 

Continental sense." It must be admitted that, compared 
with the child abroad, primarily regarded as a healthy 
little animal, the American child does appear, as they say, 
" a cute," " smart," business mannikin, charming and clever, 
and attractive, very, very often, but, from the foreign 
point of view, abnormal. 

So, with the bloom of natural childishness brushed off 
at five or six years by familiar association with the adult 
members of the family, one could hardly expect to find in 
the American girl in her teens many traits corresponding 
with those of the nursery bred, demure, young English girl 
or t\iQ jetme fille, or the backfisch. 

"They wear spotted veils and act with the easy 
sophistication of young widows," an Englishman summed 
up his impressions as a bevy of young misses from a 
boarding school entered a street car. 

" But they have a chaperon," I defended. 

" You mean the one without quite so many feathers that 
they treat like a younger sister .? " he queries, a shrewd 
vinkle in his eyes. 

It was all quite true. These girls did not represent an 
ultra-fashionable class. The school they were attending 
was just an average boarding school, and these schoolgirls, 
with their feathers, veils, laces, and jewellery, had many of 
them come from modest homes, where, in most cases, severe 
sacrifice is being made that the daughter might have her 
schooling in a large city, and acquire the dress and habits 
of a rich woman. The American girl from really humble 
ranks considers herself wretched until she can ape the 
clothes of a class above her. Indeed, if there is possible 
one new frock in an American home, the daughter gets it. 
The sight of a rich American woman raced about the world 
by her capricious daughter commands such perpetual 
amazement abroad that I have often wondered what healthy 
j rage would burn over the very common situation here of 
a woman on a small income going shabby while her 



74 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

daughter is well dressed, or the spectacle of the girl in the 
average American home who expects her mother to wait 
on her and sew for her. Yet these things are happening 
about us everywhere every day, and exceptions to them do 
not alter the diffused truth that our young womanhood is 
being transmuted into a mildly anarchical position on her 
part. With complete botcleversement of the relationship 
as it is abroad, the American young person wears exactly 
the same clothes as her mother ; the borrowing is by 
daughter from mother ; the cast off or second grade of 
gloves, hats, and even suits, is a handing down from daughter 
to mother. Except for her youthful face, the American 
young woman is a replica of her mother of forty-five. 
After sixteen, girlishness has usually gone from clothes, 
from carriage, and generally from expression. 

The young girl in the American home is given very 
little less than idolatry by her parents. The beautiful creed 
of American fathers and mothers in regard to the daughter 
of the house has been stated as follows : — 

" She is adorable, and I am devoted to her, body and 
soul. For her I shall sacrifice myself. She is the most 
important thing in my life — she rules it. I gladly stay 
back in obscurity that she may shine. I give her my all, 
and she takes it lightly, as a matter of course ; but as long 
as I am proud of her, and see her happy, I have all the 
reward I wish. I believe that nothing can spoil her, so I 
permit her pictures to be published, permit the press to 
exploit her, permit her to hear and read adulatory anthems 
of herself, until she feels, as I do, that she has no peer in 
the entire world of girls. I want her to associate with boys 
and men frankly, on the basis of comradeship. Our men 
understand her, and such companionship is innocent. I 
want her to be sophisticated theoretically, so that she may 
the better recognize and beware of any dangers threatening 
her. Yet, while knowing about life's ugliest and most 
sorrowful facts, I demand that she be treated as if she knew 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 75 

nothing, and that theatre and publisher cater exclusively 
to this myth of her rose-coloured ignorance and her really 
immature mind, however inane the result may be to my 
sturdier mental taste. For no restrictions must be put 
upon her reading, her theatre-going ; things must be 
arranged that she may go everywhere, read and see every- 
thing — her liberty supreme. The restrictions must be 
placed upon the makers of books and plays, and their 
liberty restricted for her sake." 

Unfortunately for such dreams, human beings are not 
fashioned ideally enough to improve under this idolatry. 
From such an elevation one must look down, and from her 
pedestal the American girl looks down on those who have 
foolishly forced her into an undeserved and harmful 
prominence. She leads the household. Her mother is too 
often her worshipful slave. 

After expressing a vain longing that the American 
girl might be persuaded to graft on to her spirit of inde- 
pendence and real attractions the gentle manners, girlish 
appearance, and endearing courtesy of the young girl of 
Europe who not only endures her mother's companionship 
and guidance, but has the appearance of enjoying them — 
a prominent American woman has sighed — 

" If the American girl's parents made obedience and 
not independence the key-note of her training, she might 
appear less like a youth dressed as a woman of the world, 
and suggest more a woman at the happy beginning of life. 
But these reforms can only come when the kneeling, self- 
effacing American mother gets upon her feet and asserts 
herself as her daughter's leader and friend instead of her 
blind worshipper." 

In her voluble, heedless way the American young girl 

loves her parents sincerely, and probably is not conscious 

*< of selfishness nor disrespect toward them. Yet her 

I manners to them and to her elders generally show indiffer- 

j ence bordering on discourtesy. 



76 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

It is a pity that American girls have been encouraged 
to carry this spirit of unchaperoned, unrestrained liberty 
to the extent of assertion and selfishness, for her worst 
faults are on the surface. Beneath her over-dressing, her 
emphatic self-possession, is a frank, bright, shrewd, 
generally unaffected, personality beside whom the French 
young person, with her pretty deference to elders and 
charm of manner, which is sometimes too much on the 
surface, is colourless and mentally anaemic. 

The groups of young girls on the streets in American 
cities, the girls on their way to school, strolling about 
together after school hours, in the shops or at dancing 
school, coming home unaccompanied after darkness has 
begun to fall, continually attract the comment of the 
foreigner. 

They are almost always pretty and conscious of the 
fact from the tip of the highest feather on their flamboyant 
hat to the tips of their sometimes shabby kid gloves. They 
prattle unceasingly, and use a great deal of slang. In 
passing them, you hear words like "kid," "corker," "stuck 
on himself," " in the push " falling from the prettiest lips. 
They are simply walking editions of a Declaration of 
Independence — they "are and of right ought to be free 
and independent states." Their don't-care, " sufficient-unto- 
myself" way of striding along, their veteran-like com- 
posure, their indifferent stare, or their casual " Hello ! " 
and " Howdo ? " as acquaintances pass, is all a little shock- 
ing to the foreigner. 

But the American young person is simply reflecting 
certain of our national theories as clearly as a mirror, and 
even when moments of doubt assail us, we say cheerfully, 
" Well, the experiment so far ma}^ be a failure, but the 
principle remains the same." When we see her prancing 
and romping through a dance, though the music may be 
in the most languorous time and the occasion formal, we 
say, " But she is alive from the points of her dainty shoes 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON j^ 

to the last tiny strand of her premature coiffure, and how 
absurd the governess-ridden, unawakened young person 
would be in America." 

In England, I have noticed, if sacrifices are necessary 
in the family life, the girls make them for their brothers — 
here it is the other way. That prettiest brother-hero- 
worship among the English sisters has no counterpart 
here. Here the brothers have to fetch and carry and 
often curtail practical education that the sister may have 
accomplishments. 

But we complacently draw forth the stereotyped 
picture of the European wives hanging on their husbands' 
lips, timid of thinking, saying and doing anything that 
might not please the domineering master of the house, 
and sigh contentedly, ** At least our girls never come to 
that." 

The American girls* freedom of intercourse with boys 
and men all through her life had its birth in a belief that 
was healthy, simple and beautiful. 

The little girls play with the little boys of the 
neighbourhood in the streets — it gives independence and 
insures the girls entering the rougher games which are 
supposed to be healthier than "playing mother" alone 
with their dolls. Then we say : " If boys and girls study 
and rollick together, there will be no mawkish, sickly 
sentiment between the sexes. And even when we begin 
to suspect that this comradeship, permitted without 
hindrance or guidance, is rubbing the romance out of life 
for our girls ; is robbing the one sex for the other of that 
mystery and charm that cannot exist between boon 
companions apparently of the same sex ; and that con- 
sciousness of sex — the most beautiful and wonderful thing 
in life — hangs very thinly, if at all, between the two ; we 
dismiss the question with our satisfied platitude, "The 
American girl seldom loses her heart, and never her 
head." 



7^ HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

I confess, though, it did strike terror to my heart to 
have the beautiful young thing I was congratulating upon 
her engagement (it is always engagement, not betrothal 
here, and I find a slight significance in the business-like 
sound) reply radiantly — 

" It is so nice to have a sweetheart ! He pays for 
carriages and candy, gives you flowers and presents — he 
saves you so many petty expenses ! " 

We seem to be so afraid to curtail the high spirits or 
liberty of our girls, lest, "if the bud is frostbitten and 
blighted, the fruit will be sour and shrivelled," that, as a 
rule, we fail to perceive what an unattractive complexion 
this happy abandon has taken on ; but recent magazine 
articles on the subject show that we are not all blind to 
the facts, if not perils. One arraignment reads as 
follows : — 

"When one goes, summer after summer, from one 
American seaside and mountain place to another, one 
wonders if parents and guardians are so obsessed in 
satisfied worship of their children as to be blind to a sense 
of what is beautiful and becoming. The sands of the sea 
in particular are turned into a sort of public boudoir, where 
both sexes, amazingly disrobed, meet on a footing that 
may well stun a foreigner. The younger set, naturally 
rushing to thoughtless extremes, takes advantage of the 
freedom allowed to commit flagrant oflences against taste. 
Young men in skin-tight, sleeveless, and neckless bathing 
garments, about a yard in length, and bare-armed girls 
with skirts and bloomers above the knee, loll together in a 
sort of abandon, or dive and bathe while screaming and 
clutching one another like contortionists. Two lie side by 
side, toasting themselves to the popular russet tint, arms 
under head, legs crossed, chatting as restfully as if at a 
five-o'clock tea-table ; or the head of a youth is in a girl's 
lap, both hidden by a parasol ; in wilder moods, they cover 
each other with sand which sculptures every outline of 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 79 

their bodies ; they do cake-walks and skirt-dances ; they 
dig up sand with their toes and shower it in each other's 
faces." 

They are not children — they are girls in society, from 
cultivated homes. Parents and guardians, calloused by 
custom, look on complacently and see nothing ugly in it, 
no wrong in it. There is no wrong, from one point of 
view ; there are probably fewer forbidden thoughts and 
suggestiveness in this turbulent intimacy than in the brief, 
stolen meetings of young lovers of other countries. But 
there is a corroding harm of another sort ; a girl loses the 
exquisite sex-reserve that nature meant her to have, the 
very kernel of her womanhood. When a young girl can 
dance and bathe and loll with only an apology for skirts 
with a possible or positive suitor with as little sensibility 
as if he were another girl, she is flouting the fundamental 
reason for her existence. She is something hybrid, and to 
watch her is saddening. Questions come thickly : have 
girlishness and simplicity departed from herself as wholly 
as they have from her externals } Will indifference and sex 
unconsciousness continue with her ? Into what sort of 
anomaly will she blanch temperamentally if this pure- 
minded sexlessness increases ? 

"Taps" has sounded over Miss Alcott's books and 
Dickens and Cooper as reading for the American girl. 
She devours whatever of light reading comes into the 
house ; all the latest novels, neurotic and otherwise ; all 
the unnumbered light fiction magazines that flourish like 
Chinese lily bulbs, nourished on water and springing up to 
blossom over-night ; all the sensational current history, as 
revealed in our spectacular and vernacular newspapers ; 
everything is grist to her fluttering mentality — everything 
except poetry. I have never known an American young 
person to read poetry, except under the compulsion of 
school exercise. She has shrewd, sound opinions on what 
she reads and sees, however, and she advances them smartly. 



8o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

There is a deep-rooted belief in America that the European 
young person is stupid and badly educated, apparently 
because she has not the " go " and assurance of the 
American girl, and sits silent before her elders. It is quite 
impossible to convince the average American that the 
European girl's training is thorough, though not in the 
higher " isms " of the American college girl ; that the demure 
young thing, who seems half asleep mentally, is often 
mistress of three or four languages, and always speaks one 
as well as her own ; that she is well read and observant, and 
has a critical knowledge of art. But it is no easier task to 
convince a foreigner that the American girl airily over- 
riding her seniors in conversation is anything but the 
embodiment of pert superficiality. The foundation of 
the American girl's education is laid, however, in the 
public school system of drilling a large number of minds 
into one mould — and fit she must or drop behind — and 
ambition, which is one of her strong characteristics, and 
the spirit of competition which is, of course, nationally the 
spirit of the age, keeps her up to the mark. However 
flippant and forward she may appear outside, in the class- 
room the average American girl is serious ; and here the 
really good features of co-education are demonstrated in 
the sex-rivalry and sex-pride as spurs to excellence. It is 
not what might be called "polite " education, an education 
that is available for social parade ; but the American girl is 
obliged, by the very processes of our universal public 
education, to be more thoroughly grounded than she likes 
to appear. Thus it comes that, being a forced plant 
socially, with none of the graces of education to meet the 
demand, girlhood in America is prominent for a certain 
light frivolity which, encouraged by parents, most unfortu- 
nately often manifests itself in loud and fast manners, 
when the girl in reality is as innocent as a daisy, and 
probably quite capable of passing a stiff examination 
in mathematics, history, or English composition. 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 8i 

In spite of the once-a-week cooking-classes for the 
higher forms in the public schools, and the courses in 
domestic science which are offered in some of the secondary 
schools, the knowledge does not incorporate itself in the 
American girl's character, and there is no instinctive air of 
the home-maker about her as about the young girl in 
France and Germany. Foreigners reproach us for lack of 
domestic virtues and accomplishments, and, in a way, it is 
justified. There is no general love and admiration for 
household duties in America. An American woman does 
her own household tasks when necessary, and makes a 
pretence of supervising them as she ascends the matei^ial 
scale ; but she always does it in the spirit of a Christian 
martyr, because it is duty with a big " D," not because, as 
with the haus frait, it is the sole purpose for which she was 
created, or, as with the French housekeeper, a glorified 
! mission, with cooking nationally admitted to be a fifth fine 
• art. In America, there is no particular respect paid by 
I those around her to the possessor of domestic accomplish- 
ments, and the daughter in a household cannot be uncon- 
\ sciously trained by the constant contact and example as is, 
! for example, the French girl who sees the same spirit of 
scientific intelligence and well-directed personal energy in 
her mother's management of the home, as an educated and 
zealous officer will give to the welfare of his men. House- 
keeping duties in America are labelled menial, and the 
American girl sees no reason why she should, against her 
inclination, cultivate a knowledge over the practical 
demonstration of which she has always seen her mother 
shrink and grumble. 

The English, too, though an older people, are much 
more primitive in some essentials than the Americans, 
and nowhere is this demonstrated better than in the point 
of view of the young person. Marriage in England means 
children ; and there the woman is led to believe that a 
family is looked upon as normal, and the bearing of 



82 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

children is her normal part of the marriage contract. In 
America, a squeamish artificiality surrounds the question 
in the )^oung woman's mind, and she enters marriage with 
the feeling that maternity must be avoided as hysterically, 
in fact, as it was debarred from her mother's confidence 
before. Awaking to the gravity of this increasing artifici- 
ality, in the view of life of the American girl, and realizing 
that one cannot retrograde to simplicity ; that our return 
to natural duties must be by force of will and reason, in 
default of what comes to the French and English girls by 
obedience, willingness, and inherited instinct we have 
tried the experiment of mingling social science, domestic 
economy, and race and child study with the classical 
branches in our women's colleges, and these courses are 
popular. As a rule, however, a knowledge of sociology 
and general ideas crowds out the conception of small 
duties, and the college girl comes out little better fitted 
for the problems of housekeeping than the wild-flower 
type of the average American girl, or the butterfly type 
among the wealthy. 

This study has, though, developed a class of American 
girls of whom we should be immensely proud ; the 
attractive young women in our " college settlement " work 
among the city poor. There are many of these in each 
large city, putting in practice scientific practical charity, 
daily performing acts of self-denial, good fellowship, and 
love toward others less fortunate, and living among them 
while they do it ; young girls teaching discouraged mothers 
to get healthy food and a degree of comfort out of the 
stipend that falls to them, bathing dirty babies, teaching 
the children of the slums, and keeping the young women 
of their own age off the streets by evening amusements 
and classes in the "settlement house." 

The English girl works with the poor to a considerable 
extent, but with self-consciousness, and generally in rural 
parish work, while the French girl contents herself with 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 83 

' giving alms ; but this type of American girl does good 
with a disclaimer or with a light manner and a sense of 
humour, which may mislead a stranger into concluding 
that she is lacking in earnestness. Let no one be deceived 
in regard to the quality of work accomplished by these 
young women. 

They carry it on from a high sense of duty, with 
splendid enthusiasm and excellent method. It is on a 
par with the effort in the field of government of English 
women, who, of course, know a great deal more about 
public affairs than our women. 

I doubt whether a better example of splendid self- 
reliance, independence of body and mind, and self-respect- 
ing dignity, can be found in any women in any land than 
I exists among these young women in voluntary exile, living 
t an absorbed and light-hearted life in the heart of our 
tenement districts. In other countries there are nuns, 
1 but theirs is a life vocation. These are just healthy young 
.women, with fine records in college course behind them, 
land marriage and children ahead, who are meantime 
I having a good time doing good. I have never found a 
; more finely poised type of young womanhood. Abroad, 
I where the young women, as a rule, have had to suffer 
jfrom either of the two extremes of cultivation — the too 
I carefully sheltered governess hot-house type, or the utterly 
I run wild, untaught, garden-patch variety. Work of this 
kind simply never could fall into the hands of such young 
I women ; but in America, where so many big, broad practical 
j interests and privileges are the woman's for the mere 
desire to come to her own, the success of the young 
women settlement worker has been possible. She is no less 
unique among the young person class in America than 
compared with the girl abroad. She does not shut her 
j eyes and scream, either for her own rights or over the 
poverty and vice of the other half She sees clearly and 
I calmly, and therefore works fearlessly. Any one who 



84 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

has considered settlement work a fad or a pastime, should 
visit one of the settlement houses, and see the college girl 
in action there. The usual charitable work of conferring 
a passing benefit on the individual as conducted by 
organizations is but a drop in the ocean compared with 
what the American college girl accomplished in living 
with the conditions she has equipped herself to alleviate, 
and in coping with the causes, and not merely the conse- 
quences of poverty and evil. It is among these young 
women, whose life is behind their words, that the real 
cause of equality of suffrage in America is advancing ; 
and they are setting an excellent example to the dis- 
contented, spoiled married women among the idle rich 
class, and raw recruits of hysterical others who have 
recently espoused the cause with spectacular methods. 
Whatever may be necessary to arouse the lethargy in 
other countries, America has always given too much 
liberty, too much justice to her women to give an excuse 
for anything more than quiet, earnest effort, even in this 
somewhat problematical matter of her right to govern 
officially as she always has unofficially. 

Of course the college settlement worker is a phase of 
the "bachelor girls," who, owing to the surplusage of 
women, and the enlarged sphere of women, has made her 
appearance in all European countries as well. But the 
" bachelor girl " in America is rather more normal than 
elsewhere ; girls being given so much liberty in their own 
homes do not feel the call for a " career " with Bohemian set- 
ting. The girl who, in the paternal mansion, can go and 
come and have her own latch-key — may even dabble in 
genteel self-support if she has become innoculated of hustle 
and haste — is not likely to consider "flocking by herself" 
in insanitary studio quarters or in a woman's club, or in a 
straight-laced woman's hotel, as an inspiring experiment. 
The truth is that, culpably lax in our rein and judgment 
for the young person under our roof-tree, we are a nation 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 85 

of public prudes once she seeks fortune outside the paternal 
halls. The American young woman has all the uncensured 
liberty in the world right in her home ; but a woman's 
hotel in America resembles a penal institution in its 
supervision of its guests, and there is little easy club life 
for young women as in England. The situation, so 
common in England, of a young woman living in amiable 
separation from her family that she may ally herself with 
some high-brow, dilettante cause, or secure independence 
for pursuing some " career," is much rarer in America. 

There are, to be sure, some half a million young women 
in New York City who are living more or less transiently 
without or away from family ties, and a similar proposition 
in all our large cities, but these are the bachelor girls of 
circumstance almost entirely, not of option, including as it 
does the great bulk of feminine wage-earners and those 
studying for self-support. The proper housing at reason- 
able expense of these homeless or away-from-home girls 
who have answered the call, industrial and otherwise, of the 
big city, has been one of the problems that America has 
faced, and which is now being worked out along many lines. 
In New York there is an interesting tenement colony of 
self-supporting women on the upper East Side, which is 
demonstrating that working girls may live in that city in 
homes of their own at a cost no greater than living in hall 
bedrooms of a cheap boarding-house demands. Here 
book-keepers, clerks, newspaper workers, stenographers, 
trained nurses, shirt-waist makers, social workers, musical 
students, interior decorators, dressmakers' assistants and 
students, house in two, three, and four-room flats, tucked in 
among regular bona fide families, the presence of the latter 
being expected to retard any atmosphere of Bohemianism 
such as is likely to prevail in a woman's hotel. 

At a rental of from $1.37 to $2.75 each a week these 
residents enjoy complete homes with steam heat, gas 
ranges, stationary tubes, steam laundry dryers, and other 



S6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

modern conveniences. Many of the girls prefer to do 
their own cooking ; but for those who do not, there is always 
the co-operative dining-room, where luncheon may be 
obtained for twenty-five cents and dinner for forty cents. 

An ingenious device is the receptacle used by many of 
the girls for carrying cooked food from the dining-room to 
their own little dining-rooms, there to be served in privacy. 
This receptacle, porcelain lined, has a place for the hot 
soup in the bottom, the meat and vegetables coming next, 
with the dessert on view at the top. The food is good. 
For private dinner-parties and luncheons there is a special 
small dining-room, of which the residents may have the use 
for a nominal sum. 

Walking into one of these two-room flats in which two 
girls live, each paying $1.30 a week, the visitor finds him- 
self apparently in a charming little red study — apparently, 
because, though the room is undeniably charming and little 
and red, it is not a study, but a kitchen. The red burlap- 
hung screen uncloses to reveal the gas range, the chintz- 
lined glass doors of the book-case open to disclose rows of 
dishes and cooking utensils, and thus attractively garbed, 
deceit reigns over the room. The second room, with two 
couch beds, serves as sitting, living, and sleeping room. 

Truly " palatial " in this city of hall bedrooms are the 
|4 80 a week four-room flats — four rooms and a bath — such 
as is occupied by three girls who have achieved some 
success, and have found this the best substitute for a home 
to be had. 

" It is only J 1.60 a week from each of us ! " exclaimed 
one of the three. " And just see the home we have." 

And she proudly led the way through a parlour, a delft 
living-room — which turned out to be a Dutch kitchen — a 
sitting-room, and one bona fide bedroom. 

*' Think of the price of all this ! " she said enthusi- 
astically. " It is not so much that the price is cheap, but 
that you get so much for the price ! " 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON Zy 

The remarkable feature is that the American working 
young person of high and low degree struggles toward a 
home or co-operative community of interest life, and that 
there is so little yearning toward Bohemianism among the 
student class of bachelor girls. 

The average both of good looks and intelligence is 
higher among the girls employed in the large shops in 
America than among those of a similar class abroad ; and 
in saying this, I am not unmindful of the " Queen of 
Sheba " type of shop assistant in some of London's smart 
drapery houses. But it seems as if we recruited our " shop- 
girls " generally from a class a little more prosperous — if 
the word is not grotesque applied to any portion of that 
pathetic class engaged in a hand-to-mouth struggle — than 
that from which girls in this line of work come abroad ; and 
then they are paid a little better. They undoubtedly dress 
better and average good taste ; a gaudy or a slouchy girl 
behind the counter being rare indeed, though in com- 
paratively few shops is a uniformity of costume arranged 
by the management. Just as far as circumstances permit, 
the American shop-girl patterns herself upon the fashion- 
able model of the American young person who comes to the 
shop in her brougham, and she succeeds almost unbeliev- 
ably. It is astounding, amusing, and pathetic often, to see 
how far the girl behind the counter has spread her pittance 
in achieving effects of the latest style in everything, from 
waist line and neck arrangement to amount of false hair. 
Everything except the few pence it takes to keep body and 
soul together goes on her back. But if the shop-girl did 
have any idea of saving, she would be a lonely type in 
America. 

P The American shop-girl is, however, distinguished 
above her fellows in London and Paris by her contempt 
for shoppers. 

In America, every little boy is told that he may be 
President some day, and every shop-girl finds the assurance 



88 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

in the literature she consumes that all haughty shop- 
girls marry millionaires. American sales-girls have had 
beauty contests in the daily journals, and one newspaper 
published a novel, each instalment of which was written 
by a sales-lady — or at least the paper made this claim. 
And all this importance is none too subtly conveyed to 
the waiting customer. She regards your approach with 
exasperating indifference, and, adjusting her belt buckle 
or retouching her elaborate coiffure, she continues to chew 
gum with her eyes toward her fellow clerk, and snatches 
of conversation float over the counter to you as you make 
your humble wants known. 

" He may be making good money, I told Mame, but 
he's not the classy kind you'd want to be seen at a dance 
with," and while her friend expresses her approval, she 
grudgingly pushes toward you the object of your intended 
purchase, and continues : " I'm going to wear my pink 
dress. It's simply swell with that new pearl trimming I 
got at the sale," etc., etc. 

If you are acquainted with American institutions, or 
built of the stuff that made the Plymouth Rock landing 
possible, you break in on this mellifluous stream of con- 
versation; but if you are an ordinary American citizen, you 
endure it spinelessly, accept whatever is handed to you 
dreamily or arrogantly, as the spirit moves the heroine, 
and go hence realizing that while department stores in 
every large city of either continent are all more or less 
alike, the American shop-girl cannot be duplicated in 
those countries where a caste system places^ servitors 
instead of " perfect ladies " behind its counters. 

Hand-in-hand with the foreigner's criticism that our 
national hustle and haste are reflected in the restless 
temperament of our young person, stalks the popular 
opinion that the American girl's ideal is as naively, openly, 
almost brutally practical as are her father's aims in life ; 
that for the romantic flutter of the young person abroad 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 89 

at the approach of a possible life partner, she has substi- 
tuted a cold-bloodedness, a desiccation of natural sentiment 
in her judgment and selection of a suitor. And it would 
seem as if the shop-girls were cutting their sentiments as 
well as their clothes to the prevailing style. Not long ago 
one of them — a very pretty one, — carefully manicuring her 
nails while I waited, remarked to her " lady friend " — 

" I ain't ready to marry him yet. Twenty-five is time 
enough. I'm only twenty-two. I can have a good time 
just as I am." 

Perhaps, though, the " good time " is the significant 
point of the sentiment as well as the keynote of character, 
or the lack of it, in the American young person. 

The parents on top of the social scale who, barely able 
to distinguish between a baron and an archduke, buy a 
" brilliant alliance " for their daughter with the black sheep 
of noble families abroad, whom the mothers over there 
would not want their daughters to marry, are not, though 
they would probably repudiate the prototype, our only 
citizens conforming to the European custom of marriage 
dowry. 

Down in the social antipodes, down among our foreign 
population in the large cities, the fiat " no dowry no 
husband " is almost as inexorable as in the bargaining for 
a foreign nobleman. The East Side girl herself must 
provide her own marriage portion. For instance, on the 
East Side you will hardly find a girl who does not save, 
or at least attempt to save, money for a dowry. No 
matter how hard she may work in the sweat shop, she will 
avail herself of every opportunity to work overtime so as 
to make this sum as large as possible. 

The East Side, with all the hot blood of the Latin, and 
the banked fire temperament of the Teuton and Slav 
mingling there, is not devoid of romance, nor untouched 
with the New World freedom, and not every young man 
expects the girl he marries to have a bank account ; but in 



90 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

nine cases out of ten, when the East Side youth has come 
to the point of courting his Dulciana on a park bench, or 
mooning with her on the roof of her tenement house, he 
has found out just how much she has saved to put into his 
business after marriage, and the amount has appeared 
satisfactory. 

It is not the love of money that impels the East Side 
girl to skimp and worry along on pitifully next to nothing 
of nourishment and clothing, but to gratify the ambition of 
her life and get a husband to set up in business. When 
a girl in another part of the city sings and dreams of love, 
the East Side girl thinks hard over how to scrape together 
a dowry to tempt a business husband, whether the business 
is that of owning a garment factory or a little soda-water 
stand on a street corner. 

The custom of saving up a dowry for the husband-to- 
be often causes tragedies and disappointments which, for 
all their sordid setting, certainly do suggest something of 
the glittering fiascos, and unhappiness resulting in many 
cases from the more subtle barter between dollars on the 
one side and a title upon the other as the game is played 
for the young person of wealth. There is not the basic 
difference one would imagine between these men who 
expect to be paid for marrying. On the East Side, when, 
after marriage, the money their wives brought them is 
spent or lost in some enterprise, or if it turns out that the 
woman did not have as much money as the man expected, 
either there follows a life of quarrels or the man deserts 
the woman, which, in skeleton, represents many an inter- 
national marriage tragedy. 

The education of the average American young person 
is generally good and practical. She goes through the 
forms in the public schools with the boys of her own age, 
and keeps pace with them. There is not much attention 
given to foreign languages, and it is rare that the young 
person in America masters a speaking knowledge of any, 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 91 

wherein she differs from her European sisters ; but, of 
course, there is no near-by border-land to cross with this 
knowledge if she had it. A German prince travelling in 
America, and asked for his impression of American 
women, drew a long Teutonic sigh of rapture, and 
proceeded — 

" In the first place, they have a rare and individual 
type of beauty. Don't you know the difference in taste 
between wild strawberries and the cultivated varieties ? 
How much more delicious the wild ones are ? Well, that 
is the difference between the beauty of the American 
woman and her Continental prototype. 

" When one sees an American girl, one exclaims, ' How 
beautiful she is ! ' When one sees a lovely lady elsewhere, 
the remark is, * How beautiful she looks ! ' 

" But " — and here he came to earth with a directness 
also Teutonic — " but at one thing I am surprised — that 
your society ladies are not better educated. You have 
such wonderful facilities here for the education of women. 
Yet abroad there is hardly a lady in good social standing 
who cannot talk French and German, and probably 
English, with perfect facility. Here I find that many of your 
women do not even understand French ! Is it, perhaps, 
that they are — oh, not superficial in their studies, but too 
intensely interested in too many things to learn a few 
perfectly ? " 

It is too true. The rich girl in America does not stand 
the chance of getting as well educated as the girl abroad, 
to whom youth is a subdued and thoughtful time, a plant- 
ing time of the fruits to bloom later, for here the daughter 
of a wealthy household is really in society long before she 
is formally launched, which presentation usually takes 
place at eighteen. " Genevieve began to ' leak out ' to 
parties, though, when she was barely turned sixteen — she 
looks so mature," the mother of one of these exotic 
blooms proudly remarked. So in between her social 



92 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

engagements she is given a smattering of languages and 
music. 

The rich American girl rarely goes to college. College 
education is not fashionable : it is useless in the society 
wherein the rich girl is destined to move. She knows 
enough if she sing, play piano or mandolin, and command 
a few foreign idioms, and have had the inevitable trip 
abroad. Literature and art she knows if she can recite 
a few French poems, discuss the latest novel, dance fancy 
dances ; if she has seen the Acropolis, the Louvre, and 
Westminster Abbey. 

At eighteen her education ends, and she is ready to 
enter into the principal phase of her existence. What 
corresponds to a presentation at court in other lands, 
'draws near ; the young person's debut — she is " coming 
out." Her social fledging is accomplished by two official 
events — an afternoon reception and a ball. 

For months, people have known that Miss X. will 
make her entrance into society during the winter. Her 
frocks have arrived from Paris. The debutante's wardrobe, 
as everything else in America, being made public, the 
busy women reporters from all the newspapers in some 
mysterious way become apprised of the fabrics of all her 
frocks and the disposition of every spangle and bit of 
tulle upon them. When the invitations are issued, the 
newspapers publish the story of her life, and her photo- 
graph is given double-column display. All her merits 
are enumerated and the number of young women who 
make their debut (in type) with a " perfect classical profile,'* 
" superb willowy figure," " swan neck," and *' indescribable 
dreamy expression" might make the ghost of Helen of 
Troy anxious for her laurels. 

And, curiously enough, everything about her is read 
with avidity — by those who move in her gay world and 
those staid citizens who will never see her. She is in 
society — on the stage — in the public domains. She is an 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 93 

official personage. She is the rich young person in 
America. 

The day of the tea, standing beside her mother on the 
threshold of the drawing-room, dressed in a white frock of 
bridal richness, known as her "coming-out gown," she 
receives her guests. She smiles, nods, shakes hands. It 
is about all American society will ever expect of her. She 
carries one from the numberless bouquets sent to honour 
the event ; but frequently she changes, and presents arms 
with sometimes half a dozen favourites during the course of 
the afternoon. 

Her father is generally present ; but he stands about 
disconsolately, or gathers the few men who come sheepishly 
in into some retreat or den of his own, where he braces 
their social courage with Scotch and soda. Even young 
men are far and few between at these festivities of *' putting 
the debutante over ; " for, as I have said, American society, 
like the theatre audiences, the church congregations, and 
the shops, is thoroughly feminized. 

The morning after the tea the newspapers again publish 
the debutante's photograph, the fact that she is the 
daughter of such-and-such a prominent man in whatever 
business circle he is prominent in, and the make of the 
;£"400O automobile she drives, and interesting details of 
her splendid furs and jewelry. 

The same account with slight variations, and possibly 
a differently posed picture, will follow the second great 
event in her debutante career — her ball. This generally 
consists of an hour or so of general dancing before mid- 
night, when a substantial supper is served, and then the 
cotillon, which ends some three hours later, when another 
supper is served. And these debutante's cotillons are 
given a place in the social programme, which makes 
foreigners wonder. Take the favours. The cost and beauty 
of these souvenirs in itself is significant of the royal 
princesses America makes of the daughters of her rich. 



94 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Not all the people giving these extravagant functions for 
a " bud " daughter own private yachts and railroad cars. 
Many strain purse and mind to achieve this liberality and 
originality in their tribute to the young person. 

Even her simple favours, such as the effect of a field of 
waving poppies produced in one ballroom recently, is not 
exactly inexpensive, for, provide 150 or 200 women each 
with a cluster of poppies costing only one dollar, say, and 
offset these with as many boatonnihes of the same flower 
at half the cost, and it is easily seen that the price in 
the aggregate of an apparently inexpensive set of favours 
mounts up. While the opera-hoods from which the 
debutantes looked bewitchingly forth in another figure 
were not, as might have been supposed, a fancy arrange- 
ment of paper and tinsel, but chiffon, silk, and ribbon, so 
combined in their manufacture that a hundred of them 
must have footed up to the amount of many a young 
man's yearly salary. 

The young girl in America quite takes the place of the 
young matron in society abroad. The work of securing 
for her a place to shine in society takes the entire time 
and brains of her family. 

The mother of one important bud of this season was 
heard to say distressingly, recently, that she has had no 
time for her own and her husband's friends, for she was 
entertaining so frequently for her debutante daughter, and 
when she was not doing that she was chaperoning her at 
some other entertainment, and therefore there was no time 
left for the older people's functions. 

At the end of a "first season out" both mother and 
daughter invariably take a sea voyage for recuperation. 
The mother of one of the most prominent young girls in 
the diplomatic circle in Washington has said, the life of 
intense excitement and unreckoning extravagance accorded 
the young person there, she feared, would hopelessly spoil 
her girl, and she thought she would have her spend next 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 95 

winter with her grandparents in their home on the 
Continent, to lead her back into her native customs. 

The foreign point of view is always interesting, and a 
French analyst at work on the American young person 
finds her rather a natural phenomenon. 

" It is not rare," he says, *' to see a daughter of one of 
the best families marry an actor or the secretary of her 
father — a chauffeur, even, or a coachman. She has an 
instinctive desire for the unforeseen. She loves abductions, 
elopements, midnight marriages — all those queer things of 
which the newspapers speak. Even when her parents 
make no objection to her marriage, she likes to play the 
part of the persecuted child, of the woman crossed in love. 
All that is mysterious and secret and dramatic attracts 
her. In her is a bit of that love of adventure which drove 
her ancestors to emigrate, to roam as explorers in search 
of unknown lands." 

It is this desire for the inaccessible, according to the 
French analyst, that leads many heiresses to seek titled 
foreigners as husbands. In a country without a past, 
among a people without ancestors, it becomes a distinction 
to have ancestors, even by marriage. The greater the title, 
the greater the glory of acquiring it. For this reason it 
is that, a few years ago, French marquises went out of 
fashion with American millionairesses, yielding their place 
to the members of the haughtiest group of British 
nobility. 

Even among ourselves we are not all blind to the out- 
ward effect of wealth on the American girl. One of our 
writers has touched upon it sharply — 

" The American girl to-day looks out on the world as if 
she had a diamond for a heart. She suggests what is fine 
and expensive and hard to get, what is brilliant, what 
must always bring its price and find its exclusive niche. 
One will meet in the crowd a pair of the soft, unassertive, 
temperamental eyes that instantly stir the imagination to 



96 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

dreams, and in the same glance one will almost invariably 
discover that the eyes look out of a foreign face." 

Of late, however, there has been a re-action of certain 
daughters among the wealthy leisured class, and they have 
turned their backs upon the inanity of ballroom existence 
and taken to practical philanthropy. When a young 
woman reared in wealth, with inherited millions behind 
her and countless luxuries about her, makes up her mind 
deliberately that life without taking the broader scope of 
humanity into consideration is selfish and purposeless, 
then the real test of real womanhood has come. And 
certain American young women of the type have made 
inspiringly progress toward establishing the fact that the 
American young person could, if she would, develop a 
mind and a heart from the rudimentary organs our selfish 
and foolish regime has foisted upon her. 

One of these young women bought one of the ferry 
boats which had formerly plied between New York City and 
Jersey City, and converted it into a floating hospital for 
sick babies from the city slums. She equipped and 
managed the boat herself, and any one who saw it make 
its daily start from the river pier, its decks filled with 
little white cribs, each with its tiny, gasping occupant, 
to whom the fresh air and the heavenly peace meant life ; 
the mothers of the slums, broken in spirit and frame, 
holding still tinier babies on their knees and drawing in 
deep breaths ; the trim nurses in uniforms moving about 
with food and medicine — could not doubt but that this 
society girl has successfully launched a ship of hope. 

Another has established a lunch-room for the operatives 
in one of our large navy yards, where the men get whole- 
some food at a nominal cost, and are withheld from the 
public-house lunch. 

Another has had a hand in many of the present-day 
reforms for the working woman. In a recent strike she, 
with her name and all it represented, gained an audience 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 97 

with the official of the company who had steadily refused 
to see the women workers, and laid the matter before that 
official so candidly and freely that, in the parlance of the 
Bowery, " there was something doing," and the company's 
concessions closed this strike. 

Another daughter of a house of millions, the head of 

which has recently died, has taken up her father's many 

charitable enterprises just where his busy hands were 

1 inexorably withdrawn, and the men with whom business 

brings her in contact declare she is executing his plans 

, with a master mind for detail and shrewd manipulation. 

i Cases of this kind are multiplying. Our wealthy, 

j fashionable young persons are waking up, along with China 

! and other sleeping countries, and when they are thoroughly 

I aroused, why, in this country, with no stone walls of tradition 

I to storm and a free wilderness of unblazed trails for women 

i alluringly at hand, things may be going to happen to 

I make the women parliament members in Denmark and 

the English suffiragettes look to their halos. 

1 But to return from prophecy to facts. One of the 

j tangible results of the wealthy girl's branching out from 

< her artificial life is that her interests delay marriage. Some 

I of them are becoming so absorbed that they are not 

I marrying at all, and although sociologically this might, 

j in time, present a peril, their class is so small that it is 

I far from immediate, and in the meantime they are a 

I most interesting phase in the development of America's 

I young person. For the unmarried women in the United 

j States never have the discomfited sensation and acidu- 

I lated manner of the European spinster, those " poor neuters 

for whom unattained maternity has cut the thread of 

life." The American "old maid" is a special type. A 

foreigner said recently — 

" She is .not the resigned woman who has failed to 
please, nor the sentimental one who has remained faithful 
to some bygone memory. Americans would consider it 



98 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

ridiculous to ruin their lives on account of a reckless love 
affair. The American old maid has, without question, had 
several opportunities to marry. In the United States, 
every nice girl must have had at least one proposal. 
American men desire to have a wife to * represent ' them in 
society while they work at the offices. Hence, women who 
are single remain so voluntarily, through their need of 
independence. Young girls who are poor marry for 
money. Those who are rich are at liberty to live alone, if 
they so desire." 

In fact, all through the different classes of American 
girlhood a certain air of joyousness and satisfaction is 
much more general than with the European girl, whose 
life, of course, better disciplined as it is, does lack much 
that the American girl enjoys from babyhood. 

The young American girl never has the anxious air 
that seems to be scanning the future at every moment, 
trying to guess at the fate reserved for her. 

Personal liberty is a large unit in the American ideal 
of a life worth living, and we make the young person the 
strongest exponent of this belief 

Physically, I think the American girl is over-rated. 
" The American girl " who has taken her place among the 
national types of the world, and whose long, flowing lines, 
small fine features, tea-rose pallor, self-sufficient gaze and 
veteran-like composure, would make her recognized if 
chanced upon in Abyssinia or Iceland, does exist, but 
not in sufficient numbers to justify a nation of young 
persons otherwise equipped strutting in her reflected 
glory. 

The average American girl is taller even than her 
English sister. She seems to be achieving her height by 
generations. She is not fabulously pretty as a rule, though 
perhaps even the average American girl can say with 
Madame de Stael : " I am not pretty, I am worse," for her 
vivacity and adaptability go far toward constituting a 



TYPES OF THE YOUNG PERSON 99 

charm more potent than physical perfection or mental 
advance. She has a good, boyishly slender figure, only 
running to the voluptuous when foreign blood has had a 
part in the moulding, and a good carriage when at rest. 
But the American girl walks badly. She wriggles her hips 
and she moves her arms, swinging them all the time, even 
when she carries a muff. She seems to put all her nervous 
energy into her walk. Walking badly, however, is a 
national characteristic in America. 

Magnanimously I yield the last word on the American 
young person to the French analyst — 

" Not having been subjected to any traditionalistic 
education, or kept within any hereditary routine through 
discipline or prejudice," he says, " she is exactly what she 
makes herself. She is developed freely, like a young sapling 
that has never been pruned. Her energy, which cannot 
assert itself for any definite object, seeks some other 
channel of activity. She finds the rocking-chair indispen- 
sable. She has no ease. Even while resting she swings to 
and fro, and craves for movement even in her moments of 
immobility. 

**The power of vitality unemployed creates in the 
Yankee girl noticeable exuberance. She is a slave of 
fanaticism, of exaggeration. She seeks all extremes, she 
delights in superlatives, she loves such adverbs as ' terribly,' 
* absolutely.' She either hates or adores a person. Every- 
thing is either wonderful or horrible. She declares that 

I she is * in love with chocolate,' or ' dotes on her bull pup.' 
She has no power of deliberation and less of consistency. 

j She is ready to believe in miracles, and demands that luck 
decide everything in her favour. This is the reason she so 

j often marries at the prompting of a sudden caprice. This 
is the reason she delights to be run away with, to flirt and 
to get a divorce. 

"But by frequent visits to Europe they tighten the 
links that unite the two continents, and create an exchange 



lOO HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

of thought between them, for they are anxious to learn. 
They return to America to bring home to their country 
that which it so sorely needs — a little more beauty, some- 
thing of the easy grace and of the ideal which are found in 
Europe. It is in this way that the girls of America are 
rendering good service to their country." 



CHAPTER V 

THE AMERICAN WOMAN 

** T F I were asked to what the singular prosperity and 
J[ growing strength of the American people ought 
mainly to be attributed, I should reply, *To the 
superiority of their women,' '* de Tocqueville wrote, nearly 
three-quarters of a century ago ; but an American woman 
writing to-day, says : " There is probably no one thing 
that has so limited the growth of the American woman 
as the delusion concerning not only her position in her 
own land but her position among women of other nations." 
Was de Tocqueville right, or did he see qualities in the 
American woman that Europe has discovered and America 
is yet to find ? Abroad, the American woman has come 
to be regarded as a dearly bought illusion of success on 
the part of some grovelling, striving American man ; while 
at home her supremacy is an oratorical statement of fact, 
never seeming to have been questioned by the large 
plurality of men who have wives, or that totality who have 
had mothers. But the one is as mythical as the other is 
theoretic. If I attempt to substitute glimpses of reality 
and practice, I hope it may not be considered in dis- 
paragement of my countrywomen, but simply as an 
attempt to take her from the bill-boards and show-case 
and regard her through the open door of her home. 

The show-poster type of femininity was unfortunately 
our first representative abroad, and the foreign conception 

lOI 



102 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

formed on bold impressionalistic lines. An American, to 
whom I confided a suspicion that our English cousins had 
the virtuous air of using a euphemism, in referring to our 
" new civilization," replied : "How can they help it? 
First we sent them Buffallo Bill and his Wild West show, 
then the American woman, who has her own show." 

However ungallant, there was more truth in this than 
in most epigrams, I perceived. 

With the swift emergence of a new rich class, there 
was of necessity presented the woman who had not been 
given time to lose all the transmitted energy and personal 
efficiency of the earlier mode of life, and devoid of imagin- 
ation, she sought the natural outlet of activity in ostenta- 
tious waste and conspicuous outlay. Clothes become the 
outposts of her aesthetic appreciation. This made her 
peculiarly fitted for performing a great economic function 
in a triumphant plutocracy such as was arising in America ; 
for, as an able analyst of American society has pointed 
out, the first need of the industrial male conqueror is to 
display his financial power, and, not being able " to perform 
these rites in his own person, his wife and daughters 
became instruments of vicarious expenditure of time and 
money that attest his economic prowess." But it was 
expecting too much that foreign eyes should perceive the 
sociological justification of a lot of over-dressed American 
women. Even at home there is a growing sense that the 
*' show " type of American woman is not entirely creditable 
to the management. 

A successful American comedy of recent production 
puts into the mouth of the hero attempting to dissuade a 
millionaire rival for the hand of the heroine of depleted 
paternal bank account but "old family," words to the 
effect that a man of his wealth should want a more 
'* showy " girl, a larger type to *' set off " expensive jewels 
and frocks ! 

The ruse succeeds. The American rival pats his 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 103 

pocket-book, swells out his chest, and, looking for a more 
" showy " girl, lets the heroine slip through his fingers into 
the arms of the hero. The audience smiles — but grimly. 

The expense of not only the wealthy but the average 
American woman's wardrobe is no joke. The husband 
who supplies the wherewithal for her adornment knows 
what it costs, and the wife realizes vaguely that her clothes 
are too serious a matter for ordinary household economy 
to touch. Give a Frenchwoman a drop of water, and she 
will blow a bubble in regard to costume. But the American 
woman's clothes represent as large an expenditure of 
money as of thought. Still, while the type of woman who 
perpetrates to the extent of her husband's pocket-book, 
and often an algebraically stated margin besides — a sort of 
Christmas-tree decoration of her person — is by no means 
extinct. As a nation, we are putting forth about the best- 
dressed women in the world. The average American 
woman to-day has good taste ; she buys clothes of affidavit 
origin, and wears them with the confidence born of the 
combined force of price-tag and label. 

The type of American woman who goes abroad simply 
that she may have an opportunity to display her clothes 
and her jewels is, fortunately for the comfort of Europe, 
no less than for the self-respect of Americans, becoming 
rare. This is partly because the sudden transition from 
poverty to affluence is not as common in the United States 
nowadays, with our more stable economic condition ; partly 
because, with the development of a large system of summer 
and winter resorts in her own country, she has found a 
stimulating atmosphere for her wealth-oppressed soul, and 
here she welcomes the absence of rigorous tradition which 
affords scope for the proper valuation by unstinted display 
of worldly goods. Not to slip too far down in the ver- 
nacular, she finds she can get " more for her money " by 
staying at home, where she is not forced to the fatiguing 
effort of attempting to enter society by coming in at the 



104 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

back door. Moreover, if daughter is to achieve a foreign 
marriage, the titled foreigner who would be amenable to 
such an alliance is more likely to come to the American 
resort on the same purpose bent than to be coralled on his 
native heath. 

But Europe has not only dowered the American 
woman with qualities which she does not possess, but 
with a dominion she has not realized. 

When I try to prove to an Englishman that man is 
still at the helm of our civil state, and woman not even 
at the compass ; that public life and culture — including 
politics, public morality, science, higher education, industry, 
commerce, law and literature, the newspapers and the 
church — are still produced, formed, and stamped by man 
in the United States ; and that he still adheres to the 
old-fashioned notion that men may meddle with public 
affairs instead of trusting them to the judgment of women; 
he replies with an anecdote in which guileless childhood 
seemed to render an unconscious epitome of the American 
man's position. 

The American child stroking its mother's silk frock, 
asks — 

"Where did this pretty new dress come from, 
mother .? " 

" From the worm, dear," replies the mother. 

" You mean papa } " suggests the child, mistily. 

This myth of the down-trodden American man is as 
insistent as the idea that opulence is so wide-spread as 
to constitute us a nation of actual and potential millionaires. 
And neither conception seems to have suffered diminution 
at the hands of the American tourist. The college educated, 
middle-aged woman travelling alone ; mother and daughter 
aimlessly wandering on foreign soil, avowedly to give finish- 
ing touches to daughter's education ; the group of detached 
women "personally conducted" — all this seems to fulfil 
the amiable notion of us as enormously rich ; the surfeited 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 105 

goddesses of certain good-natured, uncultured providers 
at home. 

Most of us are flattered by the implication of wealth, 
even while we reah'ze that as well compute a labouring 
man's cost of living by his expenditure on Bank Holiday 
as to estimate the average bank account on the splurge 
of the individual excursionist from the United States 
" doing " Europe in sixty days. 

And the American has been so far flattered by the 
foreign estimate of certain characteristics of the American 
woman that he has pedestalled her as one of the national 
assets — in the abstract. 

He talks a great deal about " lovely woman " and 
"the ladies, God bless them," at his banquets. On the 
magazine covers he pictures angel-faced Amazons driving a 
golf ball — presumably into eternity — or wielding the tennis- 
racket with Boadicean strength. The foreigner finds him- 
self word-poor before the complimentary epithets he is 
expected to expend on her. In other countries you may 
be gently urged for an appreciation of the architecture 
of galleries ; but the American man will, in nine cases out 
of ten, make his first question of the visiting foreigner — 

" Well, what do you think of our women ^ " 

To pick flaws in the American woman is to disregard 

the directions of the American man's mental Baedeker, 

in regard to what one ought to see and admire on this 

Continent. So the courteous foreigner who is generally 

I keenest in his wish to know the lengths money will go 

with the people who seem just now to be making the most 

j money, and has centred his interest on the millionaire 

class, is glad to save himself from the pitfalls of confessing 

that our nationality is as yet somewhat of a pill to his 

race, and renders unstinted tribute to the jewels, raiment, 

I and physical equipment of the millionaire's wife — the 

typical American woman ! 

There are several types of the American woman at 



io6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

home that I have marvelled should have escaped the 
visiting critic's eyes. Foremost among these are the 
types resulting from our system of universal education. 
If any discrimination is made in a family, it is made in 
favour of the girls, so the American college woman 
became a new type, like the twenty-four story office 
building. Abroad she was ardently envied for having 
attained so easily what women in other countries have 
fought for, when indeed they were able to get it at 
all. But this giving a first chance for education to the 
girls, and perhaps letting the boys shift for themselves, 
has its disadvantages. The question arises perpetually 
here, as well as abroad, whether all this higher education 
open to women really fits them for their work in life. 
If it has not produced an ideal, it may be held responsible 
for a type paralleled in no other nation — " the educated 
American drudge." In what other country would you 
find a college-education woman doing all of her house 
work, including washing and ironing, and often turning 
from presiding over the wash-tub to go into the parlour 
to help one child in its practice of a difficult passage of 
Beethoven or Chopin, or who, after ten hours of cooking 
and cleaning, sits down to tutor her boys in Latin and 
Greek for their college preparation ? Yet this is no 
sporadic instance, but a type of wide representation, 
particularly throughout the West. The majority of college 
women there are from families of small means ; the 
daughters of professors, doctors, ministers, small tradesmen, 
or farmers, where effort has been made to send the young 
women to the nearest State university. The girls from 
wealthy families with anything like a social position 
seldom go to college, the college course interfering with 
the period of social presentation. The men of fortune 
and the graduates of large universities seldom marry 
college women. They prefer the butterfly view of the 
American woman on parade. So the college woman 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 107 

returns to the modest surroundings which sent her forth 
for four years of canned culture and text-book drill. She 
is a nice girl, only mildly oppressed with the sense of 
intellectual superiority, not a blue-stocking — her education 
has not been profound enough for that — and she is after 
all, in the majority of cases, just of mediocre mind ; that, 
using her college as a department store, she has decked 
out in lengths of conjugation, and trappings of political 
economy. But she feels herself worlds removed from 
the realm of the kitchen poker, and the darning-needle, 
or the ungainly sphere where babies have colic. She is an 
idealist, so she marries a professional man, hoping for 
the companionship of an intellectual equal, and is plunged 
into an economic struggle which, while not to be compared 
with the meagre resources of the poor of other nations, is 
all the more appalling because hers is an unacknowledged 
situation. She must remain a gentlewoman, while she 
readjusts her focus on life from a treatise on " Chaucer's 
use of the Co-ordinate Conjunctions," to the practical 
metamorphosis of her husband's worn trousers, to her 
small son's need, or the applied action of broom and 
scrubbing brush. She has had no training for this, and 
the apportionment of time and vitality for house work 
have to be mastered, if indeed they are ever known to 
the American women only through the bitter experience 
of recurring nervous exhaustion. 

She becomes the educated American drudge, the 
drudge of the kitchen, a slave to her children, and yet up- 
holding her own in the club and social world of her com- 
munity with a nervous frenzy lest the intellectual side of 
life be closed to her. If she has married a clergyman, she 
does all the housework, including the ironing of the 
parson's white ties, takes care of the several children (for 
she is not the defendant in the national charge of race 
suicide), makes her own and the children's clothes, looks 
after the sewing circle, leads the young people's meeting, 



io8 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

and yet snatches a few minutes a day for reading and is 
regular in her attendance at the Browning Club. 

Of course she gets a bent back and strained eyes, and 
at thirty-five looks forty-five, and when I read in the 
popular magazines of the "sad-eyed," bored, restless, idle 
American women, I think of all the American women I 
know who have that look because they are physically 
worn out ; for in almost all classes of society women are 
as reckless with their physical stock as tradition has them 
with their husbands' bank accounts. Among the wealthy 
it is often the futile activity of grafting the late hours of 
recently acquired social opportunities on to the early 
rising of the meagre, hustling days in the household ; for 
the American woman has thus far allowed false energy 
and abnormal ambition to withhold her from the laurel of 
national poise and an interpretation of luxury that is real 
and not ostentation. 

Some one has said of the American woman in Sargent's 
portraits, " There is no wholesome tendency to loafing, no 
ease of manner, no sense of physical bien etre ; rather, they 
stand or sit (in the latter case on the edge of their chairs), 
like Discoboli, awaiting the signal to whirl and hurl them- 
selves anywhere — direction being unimportant. The 
sibylline contortion everything." 

But to speak of unappropriated leisure in the fate of 
the middle-class college woman is as grotesque as the 
letters sent by an ancestor of mine, fighting at the front 
in revolutionary times, to his wife weathering out a New 
England winter with seven children in a log house, and the 
daily necessity of scratching her way on hands and knees 
through the snow-drifts to succour the barn and chicken- 
coop inhabitants. He addressed her as " Honoured 
Madam," and ^' hoped she still sought to improve her 
mind and uplift her soul in communion with William 
Shakespeare and God." 

No, the educated American drudge, who includes 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 109 

about two-thirds of the college women of the United 
States, I should judge, forms a curious companion-piece 
to the " toy and beautiful tyrant ; man her willing slave," 
as the American woman is conceived abroad. 

Yet the educated American drudge is a remarkable 
type, for it must be understood that her marriage is not 
considered " unfortunate " in the European sense. In fact, 
you will find no more indignant censorship of foreign 
marriages than these professionally mated college women, 
and you will seldom find a woman in all this great class 
whose attitude towards life is one of disappointment. The 
husband is devoted to his profession, and, although never 
brilliant — because, as I have said, successful men in America 
fight shy of the college woman as mates — he is patient 
during the period when she is laboriously mixing up the 
knowledge guaranteed in her diploma with that in the 
cook-book, and immensely proud of her supervision of 
her children's education. That she has the strength to 
withstand physical and mental degeneration strikes me 
with fresh wonder every time I face the situation of the 
college-bred drudge. 

It may be that when this type has, in future generations, 
attained comfort, some luxury, and softening — perhaps the 
arriving of a serving class of moderate demands might 
furnish the god in the car — she will evolve into something 
very heroic in character ; something of which we may 
boast as a national type. As it is, scattered through the 
towns of the North-West, the Middle-West, and the North- 
East, we find the American drudge in sufficient numbers to 
afford active refutation to the charge of chronic frivolity in 
American women as a whole. That she also presents a 
phase of the universal higher education for women which 
may challenge argument on the success of that system, is 
true. Personally, despite the pathetic struggles to keep up 
appearances in many of the cases known in detail to me, 
and the violent overstrain of the system in attempting such 



no HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

a combination of physical drudgery and sustained mental 
attainments, I believe she is working towards a great 
destiny for her sex in America. 

America is the first country to exploit woman's right 
to equal education, and, in watching the experiment, two 
things should be borne in mind. The American woman 
did not secure her educational advantages because of any 
general superiority, or for an insatiable thirst for know- 
ledge, but because of the good-nature of the American man. 
It seemed to him the square deal — in a country where 
freedom in everything, from the fraternity of the glass of 
iced-water to the office of the chief executive, existed among 
men — that colleges should be open to and for women. 

Then it should be remembered how recently that time 
was, and that the American college woman has not yet had 
time to make good or bad her type. Why then be 
surprised that all American college women do not achieve 
Mrs. Wharton's mould, or that, setting aside the few who 
have felt the mission of productive work in scholarship, 
out of the mass of commonplace has come no literary dis- 
tinction, and that the American college woman, as a type, 
gives no impression of richness intellectually, nor has the 
repose of manner that suggests strength and vigour. 

De Tocqueville wrote : " I am aware that the education 
of young women in America is not without its danger. I 
am sensible that it tends to invigorate the judgment at the 
expense of the imagination, and to make cold and virtuous 
women instead of affectionate wives and agreeable com- 
panions for men. Society may be more tranquil and 
better regulated, but domestic life has often fewer charms. 
These, however, are secondary evils, which may be braved 
for the sake of higher interest." 

But that was assuming only the serious minded would 
be attracted by the opening of classic doors ; but there are 
also young women of amazing shallowness and a constitu- 
tional gaiety of nature who " romp " through the college 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN iii 

course these days, giving much more prominence to the 
social life of the campus than to the mysteries of the 
curriculum, and who come out hardly distinguishable from 
the sister of finishing-school production. 

She has the same faculty of facile, entertaining talk ; 

she is as nervously charming, as ready to sacrifice real 

cleverness to the appearance of being clever as the 

American woman without the college course ; but she has 

not spent four years within the hailing and chumming 

I distance of the heavier type of student and within the 

guidance of professors and charts without coming to show 

at least respect for trained thought, and abstain from 

opinions where she is ignorant. It is in the welding of this 

type with the book-worm college woman that there is hope 

I of a cultured, poised, and wise womanhood in America. 

• In the meantime, since the type of college woman is far 

from perfected evolution, we must submit to certain types 

I being accepted as products of our national civilization. 

i The half-educated American woman who knows no 

I discrimination between the superficial and profound, who 

\ reads and talks as a decorative function, effusing without 

' the slightest hesitation on Greek art or Chinese pottery as 

j she does over a bit of gossip, is an unhappy topic for our 

I reflection. Yet she is no negligible quantity. Moreover, 

I she has been told that such naivete is charming, and is 

; convinced that woman, in a word, is the "ishow " in success- 

j ful America, so that we are only too frequently afforded 

] the spectacle of a man of intellect and judgment kept in 

i silence by the chatter of his commonplace wife and 

daughter, who deem it their role to entertain the guests. 

We find another type firm in the conviction that it is 
the mission of the American woman to become the bearer 
of the higher inherent culture of the nation by the 
artificial development of an intellectual superiority over 
man. This is a growing category in America, and extends 
from the lady who has attended an art class and learned 



112 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

who Botticelli was, and who henceforth looks down upon 
her husband who may know all about his business but who 
thinks that Botticelli may be a new kind of pickle, to our 
platform type of woman in whom the drawing-room 
manner is lamentably absent. 

The burden of anxiety expressed by a well-known 
woman sociologist, writing a few years ago, does not seem 
to be fulfilled. " The American woman," she says, " is 
restless, dissatisfied. Society, whether among the highest 
or lowest classes, has drawn her toward a destiny which is 
not normal. The factories are full of old maids, the ball- 
rooms in the worldly centres are full of old maids. For 
natural obligations are substituted the fictitious duties of 
clubs, meetings, committees, organizations, professions, a 
thousand unwomanly occupations." 

Still, we do not seem to have been manufacturing nuns 
at a rapid rate. Marrying would seem to have gone along 
in America in its accustomed proportion, and, so far as the 
appearance of public-spirited women is concerned, I should 
say that we are bringing up the rear in our demonstration. 
It is always a surprise to foreigners that in this country 
where women enjoy so great a degree of freedom, and 
where every barrier is removed from the career of a woman 
of unusual mental development, there are so few women 
in public life. This is always explained by the paradox 
that so much has been gained for them already, and they 
have so many rights, they don't want any more ; but really 
more than the heralded satiety of power, more than the 
chivalry of the American man, which is said to cir- 
cumscribe her career, the utter indifference of the 
average American woman to any interest outside the first 
person singular and the third person plural as indicative of 
children and tradespeople is her chief deterrent from public 
action. 

The apathy of the women of the United States in 
regard to suffrage is due to the fact that the women will 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 113 

not make the investigation necessary to prove or disprove 
the larger advantages to themselves and to the community 
which might result in their possession of suffrage, and to 
the fact that the American woman at home is entirely 
adverse to doing anything to make herself appear " queer." 
And this is a curious condition. Abroad, courting the 
distinction of independence to the disregard of all con- 
ventions ; at home, the American woman is the victim of 
hide-bound conventionality, and would rather appear stupid 
than be considered " queer." 

I heard a woman of some distinction as a magazine 
writer remark to a friend who was going abroad — 

"Now don't be afraid to let yourself out. Be ready 
and free of manner and just as * American ' as they expect 
you to be, and you will get along much better than if you 
are merely uninterestingly refined." 

" Why not black up and do a straight character part ? *' 
replied the friend, somewhat horrified. 

"Oh, well," ended 1 the woman writer, aggrievedly washing 
her hands of all responsibility for the American woman 
traveller, " do as you please, but you can take my word for 
it, you will get into things much better, and be asked by 
much more interesting people over there, if you are just 
a little * freaky.' " 

And I have since had occasion, in studying my fellow 
countrywomen abroad, to believe that this magazine 
woman's code of foreign behaviour was not unique, so that 
the foreigner naturally comes to believe that in her 
country the American woman must be not only inde- 
pendent but anarchical. But, in reality, at home she guards 
convention as an eleventh commandment ; and the further 
anomalous development lies in the fact that the deeper 
into the so-called Wild West of the continent we penetrate, 
» the more rigid become the laws of custom and costume. I 
Ihave seen American women trying to enter the dining- 
] room of a European hotel for the evening meal in stiff 
I 



114 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

shirt waist and short skirts ; but American women at home 
in their native towns would not think of appearing at any 
festivity except in the latest and most exaggerated style 
of reception-frock which the local dressmaker was able to 
evolve from a paper pattern ; this being necessary to 
meet the etiquette of the church social, even when the 
other women present had earlier in the day seen her 
doing her work in a cotton Mother Hubbard wrapper. 
I heard a wealthy woman from a North-Western State 
boast of diverting an English dinner-company with a 
"cake-walk," and in the next breath explain that a 
woman in her town had been dropped socially because she 
would not pay her tea-calls within the prescribed time 
limits. Another instance of the American woman's 
adherence to the conventionalities of her home province 
occurred when a number of national representatives and 
their wives were on a cruise along the Alaska coast. 
Word was brought aboard the ship that a lawn fete was 
to be given in their honour on reaching Sitka. There was 
a momentous consultation among the women as to the 
correct costuming for such an occasion. They were from 
relatively the same section of the country, and it was 
unanimously agreed (the month being July) that light, 
fluffy gowns were the only law-abiding garments. Even 
July on the Alaska coast is not noticeably balmy. The 
day turned out to be of a crispness worthy a first autumn 
frost, but no one dared to deviate from the sartorial 
mandate. As a consequence, the congressional party 
trailed off the gang plank in a gay if slightly chilly flutter 
of soft frocks, only to be met at its end by the wife of the 
governor and other prominent women from the official 
life of the settlement, who stood to greet us, each 
wearing a long seal-skin coat reaching to the hem of 
her gown. Seal-skin evidently constituted the orthodox 
gala array in Alaska. As we confronted each other, I 
have no doubt each group made the instantaneous and 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 115 

strictly American mental reservation, "What funny 
clothes ! " 

Perhaps next to education as the differentiating basis 
of the American woman's life comes, in the continental 
conception of her emancipation, the fact that she marries 
for love. So she does ; and yet the overwhelming romantic 
love is not the common currency of America, as is 
popularly supposed. The American woman, I think, 
could be more correctly stated as marrying the man she 
likes, and, in case of opposition, being surprisingly 
obstinate in her likes. But of the superlative, tempera- 
mental passion, the American woman is untouched. 
This is betrayed in the national fiction. The innumerable 
novels that have had their days of favour because the hero 
risked his life for the heroine, have substituted a stage 
mechanism as symbolic of the sex-emotion in its more 
spontaneous and mastering flow, of which we have no 
\ understanding, except as relegated to the sphere of 
I immorality. Even the attempts at psychological fiction 
in America betray entire absence of romance or passion. 
\ The combustibles are heaped up with reckless extrava- 
gance, yet no spark is kindled. Hysterical sentimentality, 
I not passionate love and emotion, result. The heart 
I struggle of the American woman in fiction rings metallic, 
I and this because the novelist can find no prototype for 
j throbbing emotion in the so-called love-match of the 
j average American woman. Some cause, possibly climatic, 
, has certainly reduced the intensity of sex-emotion, though 
1 this suggestion is of course incapable of proof. Perhaps 
the independence of girlhood makes for a certain hardness 
instead of a strength of character ; perhaps living on the 
surface of their impractical superficial existence before 
marriage has precluded any deeper appreciation of 
'emotion, and makes the selection of a life-partner more 
jof a cotillon feature than the cataclysmic decision with 
which she is credited. 



ii6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

It may be that de Tocqueville's portrait of the 
judgment of the American woman holds good to-day. 
" When the time for choosing a husband is arrived, that 
cold and stern reasoning power which has been educated 
and invigorated by the free observation of the world, 
teaches the American woman that a spirit of levity 
and independence in the bonds of marriage is a constant 
subject of annoyance, not pleasure ; it tells her that the 
amusement of the girl cannot become the recreation of the 
wife, and that the sources of a married woman's happiness 
are in the home of a husband. As she clearly discerns 
beforehand the only road which can lead to domestic 
happiness, she enters upon it at once, and follows it to 
the end without seeking to turn back." 

Whether this is saying in complimentary form or not 
that lack of temperament more than austerity of virtue 
keeps the average American woman from flirting or 
*' poaching " after marriage, we may have suspicions. But 
on the literal face of it, it would be cruel to present the 
statistics ;of present-day divorces against it. But the 
history written in South Dakota and Newport and Reno, 
Nevada, of the number of cases that have " turned back," 
does not concern the average American ; woman, who 
chooses for a husband the man she believes holds the key 
to her future happiness. Some one has very fairly said, 
" The average German thinks she will marry any one who 
will not make her unhappy ; the idealistic German thinks 
she will marry only the man who will certainly make her 
happy. The ideal American girl thinks she can marry 
only the man without whom she will be unhappy, and the 
average girl approaches this standpoint with an alarming 
rapidity." 

In this prerogative she is adjudged of all nations as the 
most favoured of womankind ; but is she ? In Europe 
marriage brings great changes in regard to freedom of the 
woman. Moreover, all her life she has been led to regard 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 117 

the care of a separate menage as a matter of anticipation. 
In the United States, on the contrary, no greater freedom 
of leading her own life could be given the married woman 
than the unmarried possess, and it is unfortunately true 
that housekeeping is regarded as a burden. The 
American woman has been taught to cultivate raillery at 
the expense of earnestness and sweetness, and, never at a 
loss for her reply, her retorts are as crushing as they are 
merciless ; as the young woman, she is piquant and 
attractive. 

After marriage, when the European woman more often 
than not wakes up, she is prone to become gradually dull, 
almost anaemic, without the slightest effort to pique the 
interest of or ambition to please the other sex. 

Still, if marriage in America were sufficiently on a 
partnership basis, the American wife would be something 
approaching the idealized portrait of her estate abroad. 

But the fact is, that the fate of the average American 
woman who puts into demonstration her ideal of a good 
husband as the one who will be most indulgent to her 
material happiness, may be summed up in a paraphrase of 
the hero of the " Belle Aurore " : 

" That she asked for and that she got — nothing more ! " 

The American woman looks upon marriage as a field 
of selfish pleasure, and not the business of life, and the 
American husband good-naturedly accepts her point of view. 
He gives her his bank account as his part of the contract, 
jand as his means permit, he frees her from the burdens of 
I work, so she may have more time to amuse herself or 
instruct her mind as she chooses. 

"If indulgence were the mark by which women's 
position could be measured, America would come out 
jahead. But indulged women, like indulged children, are 
'not necessarily the best-treated ones." 
I While the American man talks volubly about the 



ii8 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

uplifting influence of a noble woman, and insists upon the 
tangible support the thought of her beauty and virtue 
affords him, he never dreams of asking her advice in 
business affairs nor allowing her to have any knowledge 
of his standing or progress or ambition in the commercial 
world. 

So we have the frequent illustration of the American 
woman's absolute seclusion from business methods or 
status of her husband, and her collapse when the husband's 
career of years of irregularities in transactions is suddenly 
brought to her notice through newspaper exposure or his 
suicide, though there had appeared to her no discrepancy 
in the possession of carriage and livery and the yearly 
income of £600 — her husband's confessed salary. 

While, on the other hand, lies the more cheerful yet 
altogether significant spectacle of the woman discussing 
her father's will, who says quite simply — 

'' I did not know that my father had made such a 
fortune. In fact, I had as little an idea of what he had as 
I have of what my husband makes ! " 

And all along the line, on a lower level, we find the 
evidence of the American husband's injustice to the 
American wife in refusing to make her an economic partner 
and delegating to her the role of unquestioning spender. 
The fact is, it would not please the average American 
husband to have his wife take an intelligent interest in his 
pressing affairs. And the American woman is driven to 
'' puttying " up her life with frivolities and gewgaws. 

The streets about the great department stores in the 
cities are a solid moving mass of women, as if packed on 
an escalator. And a feature found In no other country, I 
verily believe, Is the young mother pushing the perambu- 
lator with one hand, while with the other hand she 
clutches the sweeping skirt of a frock fussy enough 
for afternoon reception wear. This type forms a fair 
proportion of American shoppers. On entering the shop, 






THE AMERICAN WOMAN 119 

she checks the baby carnage, and if the infant sleeps 
she includes that precious burden in the transaction, and 
goes gaily on to the bargain sales with a metal tag to 
assure future identification, though more often the long 
row of perambulators supervised by a half-grown boy 
attendant are empty, and the toddlers dragged in the 
wake of their mothers through the bad air and crowds 
inside the shops. 

This means that the ideal of love in a cottage has been 
translated into a life in a small dark flat with a kitchenette 
as symbolic of the family hearthstone. Even if the woman 
had been trained as home maker, there is small en- 
couragement for her zeal here. As it is, she scurries 
through with her duties, and then, there never having been 
the slightest suggestion that she keep accounts or read, 
she bundles her beruffled little cherub into a carriage and, 
in best clothes herself, sets forth, not for the parks or 
outlying streets, but for the ever-alluring shops. For 
she lives in a country where clothes take the place birth 
does in Europe, and, with all other calling denied her 
married life, she acknowledges the call of the shops. 

She has no idea that the foreign eye would find 
anything remarkably out of harmony with nature in her 
playing nursemaid on a crowded business street in an 
extravagant costume. She is going to spend money, not 
always selfishly, for often she buys for her child and 
husband with disregard of her personal wants ; but she 
is expected to spend what her husband gives her, and she 
does. She is quite happy until she becomes over tired, 
which is the great curse of the American woman. Always 
the impossible combination of activities, mistaken or other- 
wise, and always the nervously tired result. 

The curious part is that whenever the necessity of 
grim bread-winning effort confronts the American woman 
from any class, she does make good. The woman of 
wealth, whose purposeless idleness has been filled with 



I20 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

the froth of fancy brands of fiction, reh'gion, and mock 
philosophy, will, if reduced to the opening fields of penury, 
convert her dilettantism into steadily clever hack-work, 
or develop the capacity for trained routine clerkship little 
suspected in the subliminal self of her former frivolous 
exterior. 

There is no class of " reduced gentlewoman," dependent 
on rich relatives in America. It will be some time before 
America can evolve a George Eliot or a Madame Curie, 
but for a successful adaptation under necessity of her 
talents to the business world the American woman should 
receive honourable mention at least. On her appearance 
as an active figure in his commercial world the American 
man accords her the dignity of making no concessions, 
and judges her skill by absolute standards, in marked 
contrast to the maudlin chivalry with which he shrouds 
her mentality in the home and drawing-room. 

Still, the success of the American woman in business 
for herself will be a slow factor in rendering her nationally 
important. The part which women play in national life in 
partnership, not as rivals to the men, is what makes them 
pre-eminently or relatively unimportant. And the American 
wife as a political helpmeet has not arrived. If the door 
of custom were held open to her, she would easily come, I 
believe, and many of the crudities of political campaigning 
and intriguing would be ameliorated through her influence. 

Yet, in our present stage, the American politician would 
as soon think of discussing the political situation with a 
woman as of converting his " front parlour " into a voting- 
booth. The average American woman is as nebulously 
aware of her husband's political conflicts as " Old Caspar " 
on the " Battle of Blenheim." If he is defeated, they will 
probably have to cut off their summer trip to pay the 
election expenses ; if he has won, she will feel called upon 
to dress more elaborately and to accompany him to the 
national capital. 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 121 

Occasionally the wife of a statesman at our republican 
court presents a pathetic spectacle. She had married her 
husband as a young man engaged in some commercial 
pursuit in his home town. His entry into politics marked 
her retreat farther and farther from his companionship and 
into the realm of " keeping the covers on the children at 
night and of shopping and planning clothes by day." By 
the time he has persuaded his constituency to send him to 
Congress he is an astute politician, a good " mixer " in a 
rough-and-ready way, who needs only to have his assurance 
tested to justify his confidence in his own ability, and he 
has gained a respect for, if not an intimacy with, certain 
conventionalities to make him distinctly adequate in his 
role of statesman ; but the wife has become crustacean in 
her provincialism. 

This type of outgrown wife in America is by no means 
as uncommon as the American sister abroad of brilliant 
plumage and entirely selfish creed would imply. When 
the conception of the American man as the dull beast of 
burden was accepted, the Western mines were only begin- 
ning to be unlocked, the Chicago hog was in its infancy, 
and our manufacture running at hand-car rate of speed. 
But these days of earnest toil-made fortunes have been 
succeeded by a period when the American man was a little 
at a loss how to employ them, and in this period of 
plethoric relaxation the American man has been refining 
himself. In too many instances to make it anything but a 
I spectacle for a pessimist to gloat over he has exceeded the 
wife in adaptation to culture and to the world's conventions. 
A lawyer, in speaking of these cases, quoted one where the 
man's individuality had become so aggressive in its 
development that recourse to legal separation was made 
necessary, and he told of the scene for the final settlement, 
which took place in his office. These two had entered 
married life by the door of guileless penury, and the wife 
was still grammatically and emotionally of the same calibre. 



122 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

while the man had fed his mind and latterly his imagina- 
tion in his effort to bring himself into the melieu his 
material success might claim. He supposed he had made 
her think that she wanted the separation. When the 
papers were prepared, and she saw the enormous sum to be 
passed over to her, she gasped, then quavered, yet looking 
searchingly at the man, said : " It didn't cost that much to 
get me, Jim, did it ? " 

It seems almost a shame to let for a moment this 
reverse side of the shield obscure the flaunting reflection 
of the American woman as she appears in the American 
colony abroad, courting the butterfly life of a country 
where the married woman is accounted an indispensable 
adjunct in the ball-room, not the wall-flower, as at home, 
and who, beneath her effervescent, bubbling enthusiasm, 
need have no serious thought as to the unswerving loyalty 
of the husband who stands behind the bank-book and waits 
for her return. 

But with infinite comfort one withdraws the vision 
from all these types to the great middle class, stay-at-home 
Americans. There are millions of these homes where the 
income is at a point above, or below, or exactly at the 
gradation " comfortable," and where the children's query 
as they throw down books in the lower hall after school is, 
" Where's mother ? " where the lord of the modest brick 
house or livable apartment has his wife's name on his lips 
as he enters at night ; where the woman, with all her 
grandiose neglect of petty economies and her sprightly 
chatter about nothing above the neighbour's coal supply or 
a new hat, intuitively catches his half-spoken word without 
asking, or who, equally restful, can make his everyday 
knowledge seem to be a thing of importance without 
bothering him about it ; in fact, the woman who perhaps, 
from day to day, is a more comfortable companion than the 
strong-minded, economical helpmeet would be. 

Later in life her sons call her with deep affection, "The 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 123 

old lady," and, with a tender irony tell you they all had to 
have college educations to keep up with the " old lady." 
The home intercourse is human and intimate. The children 
turn out healthy and commonplace. In the interval 
between their full growth and marriage the mother turns 
mildly to card-parties and church work. When the grand- 
children appear, she fusses and worries over colic and 
measles again. Her nerves and digestion stand the strain 
fairly well. There are millions of her ; the foreigner never 
sees her, but, like the common soldier who does the mighty 
execution, her monotonously repeated features stamp the 
rank and file of American women. 

Theoretically, there should have developed in the South 
a poiseful, cultured, Lady Bountiful type of womanhood. 
With the settlements of black servitors to do her bidding, 
and a manorial style of living in the early days, one might 
have looked for an Americanized version of Vere de Vere. 
After the Civil War and this section of country was despoiled 
of culture, the Southern bard, the Southern newspaper, and 
the Southern orator still proclaimed in chivalrous super- 
latives the charm of radiant Southern womanhood. They 
flaunted this one tangible illusion of the past days of 
splendour before the " austere, unsexed, Puritan woman of 
the North," as they conceived her. Descriptions worthy 
of Sappho were applied to every individual Southern 
woman rising slightly above the ordinary. There was 
heroic pathos in the chant of " lovely woman still trium- 
phant " from the throats in which the war-cry lay stifled, 
and something to dim eyes in this " vision of faire women " 
in a land aesthetically as well as commercially devastated. 

The uttered ideal of the Southern man may have 
become more or less perfunctory ; to take a Southerner's 
compliments seriously is as ridiculous as to translate 
literally \hQ f agon parley between diplomat and king. 

Many of them have the reputation of belonging to the 
class of " Men who have rounded Seraglio's point ; they 



124 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

have not yet doubled Cape Turk " ; or, at least, they 
apparently do not hold the opinion of the Secretary of 
State who said that the two things in life of which one 
might not boast of success are diplomacy and love. But 
the Southern man's admiration for womankind, and her 
eternal attraction for him, must not be measured by the 
deviations of man in any other part of the country, for the 
woman he marries, no matter what age does for her, and 
despite his devoted attitude toward every other woman he 
meets, remains the very centre of his heart. 

At a White House reception I once stood talking to 
a Southerner. His eye wandered to an uncommonly plain 
woman clad in a Dolly Varden style of fabric, cut to 
accentuate cruelly her past-middle-weight contour. It 
was his wife. He looked at her adoringly. At last he 
spoke with enough emotion to have carried a Northern 
man through a ticklish Wall Street deal. 

"I declar', that woman's just naturally stylish, and 
that's what she is," he said. 

This attitude of the Southern man has had a good and 
bad effect on the Southern woman. She expects from her 
husband the consideration due to a queen or a baby, and 
she is girlishly coquettish at sixty. Age does not dull the 
colour of her frock nor her desire to please. She is of all 
American women the nearest approach to temperament. 
She frankly uses cosmetics to enhance her charms. She 
has been told that she is charming from her cradle, and 
she believes it with a fervour that makes it true that " a 
Southern woman dies twice, the day she quits life and the 
day she ceases to please." 

She, too, tells of her romantic conquests, and preserves 
the superb air of a reigning belle even where pinched 
circumstances have succeeded the luxury of the plantation 
days. She is a man's woman. I have yet to meet the 
very young man or the old man that a Southern woman 
could not captivate. 



THE AMERICAN WOMAN 125 

She knows that while her husband professes a broad- 
minded, effusively chivalrous admiration for all woman- 
kind, he really considers the nervous, energetic Northern 
sisters as " alarm clock women who buzz for a little and 
run down," and thoroughly believes in his Southern women, 
who are content with the power of virtue and beauty, 
without reference to being President or even being on the 
school board, as a type envied of the whole world. 

So, as a rule, mentally the Southern woman still 
adheres to the period of brilliant brocade, and slippers, 
and "patch," and fan, and fetching smile. With all the 
immense industrial development of large sections of the 
South which has brought strength and fulness of life into 
the whole organism, attained and raised in a way the 
standard of social existence, yet the sphere of woman's 
development in the South has remained until recently 
practically untouched. When nowadays the intellectual 
type does appear, however, it is much more attractive than 
most Northern women of that type, so far as grace and 
polish and the general amenities of life are concerned. 

According to statistics, moreover, there is less marital 
unrest in the South than in any other part of the country, 
and the families are larger than elsewhere. Nietsche has 
said : " I would have the women dance and bear children, 
and the men to fight," and who knows ? 

Perhaps the type of American woman who has effected 
the most apparent evolution is the farmer's wife. Formerly 
marooned on a vast acreage with no human companionship 
during the day, when her husband and the " farm hands " 
were at work at distances which would equal another 
township or county in more settled districts, and with 
nothing more stimulating before her than the preparation 
of the next meal for the cormorant appetites of the field 
workers, she contributed more than any other class to the 
insane asylums of the country. 

Now, with the telephone, the postman at her door, and 



126 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

the various courses of reading conducted by post, she has 
become an astonishingly well-informed, mentally poised 
type of woman. The steady pressure of the sober earnest- 
ness of her daily life does not lend itself to feminine 
excesses; and yet the farmer class in America is prosperous 
and wealthy, and she has no difficulty in securing means of 
developing her inner life in conjunction with the practical. 

Not long ago the governor of a Western State, who 
was also a prominent farmer in his community, was ex- 
pected to make an address to an assembly of delegates 
from neighbouring States. His train was delayed, and he 
was unable to reach the conference in time. But his wife, 
who was in attendance, took his place, and spoke on the 
needs of the farmers' wives with a crystalline presentation 
of facts that was most convincing, and received national 
circulation. 

There are several large farms in the West where the 
active proprietor is a woman, and they are successful. 
The strange quiet of the practical wisdom of the few 
women of this type I have met contrasts sharply with the 
fuss and fret and worry of the women who have gleaned 
from fiction and women's clubs a large assortment of ideas 
on the American woman's perfection, and who flutter 
discontentedly away from the family hearth in the hope 
that superficiality will be construed as subtlety and 
individuality abroad. 

It is the fate of a prosperous healthy nation that the 
women should be idealized out of all proportion to their 
actual positions, and to the exclusion of a mature re- 
adjustment to the welfare and perfection of the whole State. 

A French anthropologist summarizes the historical 
relation of woman to society as "first a beast of burden, 
then a domestic animal, then a slave, then a servant, and 
then a minor." It may be that the American woman's 
evolution is to be taken up at the last point. The 
possibilities are as infinite as her present variety. 



CHAPTER VI 
HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 

AN Englishman travelling in America not long ago, 
and scorning the usual methods of the diarist, 
kept a sort of pocket registry, in which he entered 
his impressions in "credit, doubtful, and debit" columns. 
To our credit account he put, I remember, ** oysters, water- 
falls, parlour-cars, shoes, and skyscrapers." Under doubtful 
came ** newspapers, mincepies, millionaires, furnaces in 
dwelling-houses, and negroes;" while we were judged 
as owing an apology, or at least an explanation for, 
"monuments, spring weather, servants, and housekeeping." 
American housekeeping has long been under fire from 
foreign critics, and the American housewife is constantly 
arraigned for her careless household management and her 
scorn for economy. America is a place where fortunes are 
made, not saved. The American man always found it 
easier to make money than to save it. When a new want 
develops in the average American family, retrenchment in 
I other directions is never contemplated as a solution, but a 
greater income is managed by the male provider to meet 
\ the increased expenditure. 

It is not a question of making "a little and spending 
a little less " in America, but the constant and almost 
universally successful quest to make much more and to 
spend it all in the certainty of more to come. The 
expenditure of the American household depends upon 

127 



128 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

mental rather than material limitations, so it is expecting 
a good deal to look to the American housewife, whose 
vision includes an almost assured rise in her fortunes, for 
the exactitude in shilling and pence account of the over- 
sea households where the economic status of the average 
woman is established at birth, or certainly on the day of 
her marriage. 

For instance, the economist tells us that the average 
English working-man earns about £i 4s. a week. He will 
probably earn the same all his life, and his son will con- 
tinue the family fortunes on the same modest scale, and 
they will each maintain a family, and even save. 

The average American working-man will earn at least 
£2 a week, and, with the rapid rise made possible by 
better industrial conditions and the greater opportunities 
for earning money, the family should shortly have £'^ a 
week, with £^ in sight as a stimulus to exertion. From 
this class of intelligent, self-respecting, industrious persons 
rises, in the next generation, thanks to free schools and 
democratic plasticity, a group who are typical Americans 
whatever their grandfathers were. These are the educated 
persons in the community, young college graduates in 
business, clerks, tradesmen, and skilled workmen of the 
highest type. No class barrier " grooves " them socially. 
The income of this typical family is from ;£'300 to £600 
2l year, and such are the possibilities in the industrial 
conditions of America that the limit of earning capacity 
is measured only by intelligence and the power to grasp 
opportunity. The tendency is almost universally upward, 
and with a constantly shifting basis of household funds, 
close calculation on the part of the housewife seems a 
fruitless and unappreciated task. Accounts are rarely kept 
in the American family, and the housewife seldom has a 
chance to become skilled in the use of money on any 
settled scale of income. 

This constant readjustment to an increasing scale of 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 129 

income with its attendant temptation to extravagance does 
not, of course, refer to the very poor nor the very rich, both 
of which we have always with us, but, as an English writer 
has said, " paupers and millionaires are alike independent 
of statistics." 

It is with expenditures of the middle and working 
classes that the foreign critic confronts us, and I realize 
that no amount of generalized explanation of conditions 
will suffice before the two specific charges : 
\ First : That the cost of living for the artisan in America 
is one and a half times dearer than in England, so that the 
larger earnings in America are offset by expenses out of 
proportion to the higher wages. 

Second : That the rich man setting the standard of 

I prices here, the "comfortably off" have not the essentials 

( of comfort to the extent that this class abroad have. 

( In the first place, it is the standard of living, not the 

I cost of the food itself, that is higher among the working 

class in America. You take the foreign workman coming 

over here with his " macaroni," or " bologna," or " potato- 

and-tea " standards of diet, and, in a short time, his food 

expenditure will be represented approximately by the 

following four weeks' budget of an Americanized Italian 

family. The man and wife in this family were born in 

Italy, but the four children were born in New York. 

I The man was a stone-cutter, and his income for the year 

was ^138. 

It is doubtful whether the same variety in adequate 
nourishment for a family of six could be obtained at the 
same cost in any large city abroad. There, among the 
people of this class, it would not have been sought, but in 
America the demand comes with the ability to gratify it. 
If the Italian peasant standard of living had been persisted 
Jin, there would have been quite munificent savings from 
jthe American income. 

No doubt the enlarged diet is made necessary to some 

K 



I30 



HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



extent by the change in climate and conditions of living, 
but to this exigency can hardly be attributed the gaudy | 
plush-covered furniture in the " parlour," the lace curtains 
at the windows and the ubiquitous folding-bed, and re- 
ligious pictures of the saints, the Virgin Mary or The 
Sacred Heart, which form the interior of the typical 
working-man's home of this class, and which became 
necessities upon adopting the American labourer's standard 



oi living. 

Food Expenditures for Four Weeks 






Kind of Food. 


Cost. 


Cost 


per week. 




£ 


s. 


d. 


£ 


S. d. 


Beef, veal, mutton .... 


I 


I 


Si 


o 


5 41 


Ham, pork, bacon 










O 


7 


I 


o 


I 9i 


Fish . . 










o 


3 


2} 


o 


O lO 


Chicken 










o 


9 


lO 


o 


2 5v 


Butter . 










o 


5 


I 


o 


I 3 


Cheese 










o 


4 


o 


o 


I o 


Eggs . 










o 


4 


o 


o 


I o 


Milk . 










o 


5 


9 


o 


I 5^ 


Vegetables, fresh 










o 


8 


lO^ 


o 




„ canned . 










o 


2 


3 


o 


o 7 


„ dried 










o 


2 


8^ 


o 


o 8^ 


Potatoes . 










o 


3 


7^- 


o 


O II 


Bread . 










o 


7 




o 


2 ID 


Sugar . 










o 


3 


or 
^2 


o 


o 8i 


Coffee . . 










o 


I 


5^ 


o 


o 4i 


Macaroni 








i o 


8 


32" 


o 


2 I 


Cereal (rice and barley 


'r) 








o 


2 


9i 


o 


o 81 


Fruit . 










o 


5 


o 


o 


O 1} 


Olive Oil . 










o 


2 


lO 


o 


o 9 


Sundries 










o 


2 


7 


o 


o 8 


Total 


5 


II 


9 


I 


7 lo 



The furniture as well as the clothes worn in America 
by this family would represent a much higher grade of 
society in the land of their birth. The same clothing 
qould hardly have been bought cheaper abroad than from 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 131 

the small shop and side-walk (pavement) merchants of 
lower New York, but in the former peasant state it would 
not have been aspired to. It amounts to this : that a 
large proportion of working-men in America, beginning 
life as peasants, become middle-class citizens in the land 
of their adoption, and, with the transformation, the 
peasant's penury and thrift disappears with the peasant's 
clothes and surroundings. Balancing his cost of living 
with the comfort obtainable in comparison with the same 
class abroad, the results would, I think, be decidedly to 
the advantage of living in the United States. 

The one item of expenditure which draws heavily upon 
the workman in America is his drink. Wine and beer are 
higher here than abroad, and the Americanized foreign 
workman is obliged to pay a luxury price for what he has 
been accustomed to consider as a part of his food. To the 
above budget, for example, should be added £1 9s. 8d., 
which was spent for wine for family use during the four 
weeks. 

The native American household regard "drink" as a 
luxury, and in hearing of its cheapness abroad it Is 
reasoned that, as luxuries are cheap so the staples of diet 
must be cheap, not realizing that while the foreign work- 
man at home could get his wine cheap, if of very inferior 
quality, his diet would be black bread, macaroni, and 
chestnuts. 

The workman's family in America where butter and 
meat is not regularly served is rare. 

I have two budgets from typical American families of 
the lower middle class in a large city. They lie in the 
stratum above the very poor, whose struggle is rehearsed 
in the record of charitable societies, and below the class of 
highly skilled artisans' families. One point here must be 
noted. In America, in the large cities, the " black coat " 
man, the great clerk class, is rather worse off than the 
artisan in a strongly unionized trade. Counting-room 



132 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

clerks, bank clerks, book-keepers, are paid from £2, to £6 
a week ; while bricklayers, thanks to their union, earn 
from a pound to twenty-eight shillings a day ; carpenters, 
plumbers, electrical workers, and other members of skilled 
trades from twelve to sixteen, eighteen, and, occasionally, 
twenty shillings a day. 

The first family consists of father, mother, and two 
children. The only source of income is from the father, 
who is a draftsman in an architect's office, and earns £^ 
a week. He also makes a few dollars extra in drawing 
plans and specifications, and this amounts to about £14. a 
year. The home consists of three rooms, the rent of which 
is £2 I2S. a month. The sanitary conditions are good, 
and whileithe bedroom is small, with only one window, the 
kitchen is conveniently arranged, and the parlour has two 
large windows. The rooms are well furnished. The 
furniture cost £/^2, bought " on time " when the man 
married, and was paid for in two years. The Englishman's 
reflection on American housekeepers holds particularly 
true of this class, and this case is typical. 

The rooms are never in order ; everything is untidy, 
but not dirty. The wife is pretty, bright, and ambitious, 
but entirely untrained and without system in her work. 
She cannot sew — few women in America of this class 
know how to — so all the clothing is bought " ready-made," 
and is thrown away when worn out, very little mending 
being done. She is, however, a devoted wife and mother. 
Their expenditure for recreation was most carefully 
estimated. They went regularly once a week to a theatre 
all winter. This cost about £^ for the season. They also 
went to six or seven balls (2s. each) as the wife is very 
fond of dancing. In the summer they take the children 
several times a week on trolley car (electric tram) rides 
in the evening besides trips to a near-by resort. Last 
summer they spent two weeks at the seaside, where they 
paid £2 for two furnished rooms and boarded themselves. 



i 



^>,V^"' j^ 




THE BOWERY, NEW YORK, SHOWING THE ELEVATED RAILWAY 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 133 

In all, they have a good deal of pleasure and recreation, 
and are, I believe, typical of many households of this class 
— extravagant in some ways and provident in others, with 
a fair degree of comfort and prosperity, but with very little 
provision made for the future ; but, it may be repeated, 
Americans are not a saving nation. Here is the budget — 

Income £170 

£ s. d. 

Food, including lunch-money for the husband . 72 16 o 

Rent ;^2 I2S. a month 31 4 o 

Clothing 13 o o 

Light and fuel 10 10 5 

Insurance 1297 

Recreation 10 o o 

Books and papers . . . . . . 3120 

Drink, is. 5d. a week, not more than . . 400 

Sundries (tobacco, shaving, etc.) . . . 200 

Medical attendance (including dentist, ^6) . 900 

Total . . 168 12 o 
Surplus . . 180 

£170 o o 

Three things in this budget may be noted as 
characteristic of this class in America. 

First, in a family of most shiftless procedure in regard 
to clothing, where the premeditated poverty of patches 
and darns is foresworn in favour of the impromptu smile of 
gaping holes, great concern is given to keeping the 
children's teeth in condition. In this account a large part of 
the £6 dentist's bill was incident to straightening irregular 
front teeth for one of the children, and it is not an unusual 
consideration. The American workman's child has, as a 
rule, much better teeth than the British child in this class, 
or even the peasant child abroad, for which, of course, 
American dentistry must be thanked in part. 

The second item of significance is the small expenditure 



134 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

for drink. The seventeen-pence a week is quite typical of 
this class, and rather a contrast to the average sum devoted 
to drink by families of the working classes of England.* 

The third noteworthy feature is the insurance pay- 
ment. It is somewhat above the average amount in this 
budget, but it is rare to find a family in this class without 
some expenditure for life insurance. And this is due 
almost entirely to a desire to have a " decent " or even fine 
funeral. The standard of these people in regard to 
funerals — the ostentatious display of flowers and the 
number of carriages — produces a startling and tragically 
grotesque effect when one considers the humble abode 
from which the cortege of pomp and circumstances usually 
starts. 

Funerals are a form of dissipation among this class. 
There is no orgy of grief and stimulated cheer before the 
burial, but in the display of decorative coffin and hearse 
and stream of attendant coaches the family proclaims its 
social status to the neighbourhood. A family frequently 
submits to being dispossessed, or to going on a pinched 
allowance of food and clothing or fuel, to keep up the 
insurance ; and the insurance is almost invariably devoted 
to the funeral, it becoming a ghastly gamble as to which 
members shall hold a policy. 

The cost of the average funeral among our working 
people is ;£"20. Going to funerals of friends is considered 
an obligation, but at the same time a kind of outing. 
Each family supplies its own coach, outside the chief 
mourners, and the usual price is £i 2s. So that when a 
family has gone several times in the year, the fact will be 
mentioned with pride among the other recreations the 
family has had. Yet the knowledge of the insurance 
held by one of these households fosters a spirit of inde- 
pendence and the commendable horror of a pauper funeral. 

* This is estimated at 6s. lod., by B. Seebohm Rowntree, 
" Poverty," p. 142. 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 135 

My second budget of ;f 273 yearly income is from the 
family of an assistant shipping clerk, whose income is 
increased by the earnings of a daughter nineteen years 
old. There were two children at home, including a son, 
who died during the year. The working daughter is a 
fitter in a large clothing shop and earns ^i i6s. a week. 
She keeps eight shillings a week for her clothing, but turns 
over the rest into the family treasury. The income, 
therefore, may be stated — 

£ s. d. 

Man 200 o o 

Daughter 73 o o 

Total . . 273 o o 
The expenditures, as nearly as I could gather, were — 

£ s. d. 

Rent 48 o o 

Food 124 o o 

Clothing for four persons 34 o o 

Light and fuel 10 o o 

House furnishings 500 

Union (is. a month) 0120 

Newspapers (6d. a week) ..... 160 

Church 200 

Medical attendance 500 

Funeral 32 o o 

Insurance 500 

Spending money (man ^7, girl ^5) . . . 12 o o 

Total . . 278 18 o 
Income . 273 o o 

Deficit . . 5 18 o 

This is an example of a family in the first year of an 
increased income. Up to that time the father had been a 
porter in the office where he now works as clerk and 
received ^160, and the daughter, as an apprentice, was 
unpaid. 



136 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

In this instance the deficit might not have occurred but 
for the emergency of sickness and the funeral. They are 
ambitious, fairly educated people, and the father has 
opportunities still further to advance. The horizon of com- 
fortable living is broadening. Their wants keep pace and 
overstep the growing income. The failure to make ends 
meet is not regarded as ominous. Next year they will have 
adjusted themselves to their conditions, and expenditures 
will be less reckless. It is a typical case, and a modest 
example of the uncertainty of household accounts, through 
the optimistic transition of fortunes in the United States. 

The family had moved from a flat, for which they paid 
£2 6s. a month, to a flat of five good-sized rooms with 
well-equipped bath-room at £^. The expense for food 
mounted from £\ 8s. as a weekly average to £2 4s. But 
their diet was as attractive and abundant as that of families 
on a much higher income, and to see the mother and 
daughter on the street, one might easily judge their clothes 
the expression of a ;f 700 household. The wonder to me 
was, not that they had failed to save — for the longer you 
live in the United States the firmer becomes your convic- 
tion that about the only evidence of saving is in our 
magazine articles on " household economy " — but that, 
frankly, they got as much as they did for their money. 
They had a piano and a sideboard, which must have been 
purchased even in the poor days, and the furnishings and 
bric-a-brac gave the atmosphere of a well-to-do family in 
a small town. 

Of course, for the same money they could have rented 
a house in the small town ; but, unless they had their own 
garden for raising vegetables, table expenditures would 
have been as high and not as varied as in the crowded 
sections of New York. The cost of living in the suburbs 
of a large city is considerably higher than in the city 
markets. 

The foreigner seldom fails to express amazement at the 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 137 

income of the skilled artisan in America, which places him 
materially above the professor in a small college and on an 
equality with the moderately successful professional man. 
" Your mechanic's home is merely a cloth-bound edition of 
the millionaire's edition de luxe," was an Englishman's 
observation. Free from class distinction, the artisan 
aspires to the same tastes as the rich man, and his income 
has become adjusted to gratify this ambition to follow 
luxurious tastes rather than to meet the actual cost of 
livingias accepted by his class abroad. 

The heating of American houses always falls under 
foreign criticism, and does not entirely escape native 
comment. It is an open question, on which much can 
be said on both sides. The American says that his much 
calumniated method of heating his entire house by a 
central stove, from which the heat is coaxed into every nook 
and cranny by steam or hot water circulating in radiators, 
or by the direct piping of hot air, is the only comfortable 
condition for an interior from December to well into 
March. He recalls to you the continual procession of coal- 
scuttles going upstairs in an English home, and the roasting 
on one side, freezing on the other, of the open-grate system. 
He avers there are as bad throat and lung troubles in Old 
England as in the incubator homes of New England, and 
that if he must take cold and die, he prefers to do it 
comfortably. 

The American woman delights to wear the most 
summery kind of clothes indoors in winter, and claims that 
is the tactful way to meet the wintry blasts, with lace in her 
super-heated house and furs on the street. She will never 
admit that her house is heated above 70°, although I venture 
to say more household thermometers register 80° than below, 
and 80° of artificial heat, even in a lingerie frock, is 
enervating. 

This revives the question of the comparative cost and 
extent of comfort in the moderately well-off families. 



138 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

The cost of gas is higher in America, being about four 
shilh'ngs a looo cubic feet, contrasted with sixpence less for 
the same quality in London ; but the London gas bills are 
generally larger, perhaps because a greater use of artificial 
light is necessary. This does not hold true, of course, of 
the bills in the families where the cooking is done by gas, 
the use of which is increasing in the United States. 
Electric lighting, like the telephone, is much more general, 
cheaper, and better in America than abroad. 

Water rates in large American cities are only about 
half those in London, and in a comfortable home in the 
United States, there will be two bath-rooms, and the " side 
walk " (American for front pavement) will be washed with 
a hose spray every day. Coal, for heating, averages twenty- 
five shillings a ton. 

Granite ware kitchen utensils and many conveniences 
for cooking are very cheap in the United States. Five 
pounds will buy as complete a kitchen outfit as any 
fastidious housewife could desire ; but the coarse crockery 
is dearer, and not nearly so decorative as that on the pantry 
shelves in England or Germany. 

Coming to the details of the cost of food, I cannot find 
warrant for the statement made on both sides of the 
Atlantic that " everything is cheaper in England." After 
considerable investigation, I return to the conclusion 
expressed by a cook in London, who said, " English eats 
big and hearty. America eats light but terrible fancy," 
and believe that it holds a balanced equation. The house- 
keeper in America has a greater choice for the same, even 
for less money, but variety rules her table to such an extent, 
and she includes what a coloured servant terms " frivolous 
cooking " in the daily diet, that the expense is equal to that 
of the substantial food purchased for an English household 
of the same circumstances. 

The American, listening to an Englishwoman's interview 
with her trades-people, is impressed by the amount that 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 139 

will be ordered for even a small family. The separate 
^orders for the children's dinner and the servants' meals 
seem to her extravagant ; for the roast that she would 
order for the family dinner in America (children, of course, 
dine with the elders) would " last so long," as the expression 
is, if only served at the main table, that, lacking the 
prodigies of thrifty transformation of the French kitchen, it 
would be relegated to the waste long before its material 
\ finish. But when the American sees that everything that 
is ordered for the English household is used, she is still 
more amazed. 

The substantial pudding in England is unknown in the 
United States, and the English tart — called a "deep-dish 
■ pie," to distinguish it from the flat type of pastry supposed 
] to have been copyrighted at the board of the Pilgrim 
( Fathers — appears but seldom. But the variety of meringues 
I and ices and puff paste, cream-filled fantasies from the 
j bakery crowning the usual American dinner, and, above all, 
( the infinite variety of the American breakfast, reveals 
I something of the details which tip the scale of table 
I expense somewhat toward the lighter-eating nation, 
i " Coffee is half the breakfast," is the American's verdict, 
I but only in the sense that, like tea in England, breakfast 
! would be nothing without it, not in the literal sense of 
I the Continental breakfast, for, in place of that coffee and 
j rolls, or the tea, toast, eggs^ and marmalade of the orthodox 
I English breakfast, the American breakfast always includes 
fruit — either oranges, grape-fruit or small melons ; some 
sort of cereal, for Americans are great consumers of cereals, 
though not the old-fashioned oatmeal (you could almost 
reckon the number of Canadians and loyal Scotchmen in 
New York City by the demand for that), but the " ready-to- 
serve," " prepared-by-patent-process " varieties of ** break- 
fast foods " which are, except for the cream and sugar on 
]them, about as nourishing as pine shavings ; then follows 
the main course of cutlet or sweetbreads, or calves' brains, 



140 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

or kidney stew, or shad roe, or some fish like the American 
" smelts," which resemble a foreshortened eel and taste like 
imitation white bait, with bacon and eggs as the Greek 
Chorus element in the housekeeper's menus. Also the 
American breakfast is not complete without '* biscuits " 
(scones), muffins, or " popovers," and the finishing flourish 
of "hot cakes " served with butter and maple syrup. 

Lunch is a negligible item in the American household 
expense, and dinner corresponds more to a rather elaborate 
English luncheon than the heavy late dinner as it is known 
in England, while the so-called " snack " in the way of a 
supper just before retiring, which is so often looked for in 
the English household, does not feature in the American 
regime as yet. 

Meat, with the exception of fillet and sirloin, which is 
the same in both countries, is dearer in England than in 
the United States. The Scotch-fed beef, from which 
comes the wonderful juicy joint served in London homes, 
is superior to anything found under the name of Chicago 
beef, but it is also higher. Poultry is cheaper in the 
United States. I have a witty Englishwoman's testimony 
to this : " Oft have I sighed for the flesh-pots of Egypt, as 
I contrasted the eighteen cents, per pound for prime chicken 
and turkey in America as against three shillings for a 
skeleton pullet or twelve shillings for a lean and lanky 
turkey. The one becomes fact in flesh and the other is 
bought on hope." Milk, butter, and eggs are the same, but 
coff"ee and flour cost less in America. Even moderately 
good tea is 2s. 5d. in the States ; but as cofl"ee, not tea, is 
used to undermine the nervous system here, that expense 
is not serious. 

In regard to fruit, there is nothing in America to 
compare with the English grapes, strawberries, cherries, 
currants, and pears. But fruit is much cheaper in America, 
and there is a greater variety of the ordinary kinds. The 
" Concord " grapes, with their clusters of deep blue berries 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 141 

(a variety first known in the old New England town that 
Emerson made famous), can be bought in five-pound 
baskets for a shilling. As for apples, pears, peaches, and, 
above all, bananas, they are among the cheap fruits in 
America, and are quite as good as much higher-priced 
products in England. 

For turbot and the unique sole the American market 
offers oysters that do not taste like sucking a brass key — if 
I may be pardoned that comparison with the English bivalve 
— and lobsters which are no more expensive than the 
English fish. And of course an American will always 
protest the superiority of terrapin and canvas-back, even 
of the so-called " puddle " duck, which range in price with 
game in the English markets. 

America has a great advantage in the variety and cost 
of vegetables. The sun never sets on the kitchen garden 
of America, and with rapid transit and cold storage to 
revolutionize "local" markets with products from all ends 
of the continent, there is hardly a noticeable "season" for 
any one vegetable, for some part of this enormous country 
is producing it at every season. Truth compels me to 
add, however, that while we have green peas and asparagus 
all winter and the distance from the source of these supplies 
makes a surprisingly small rise in cost, the green peas 
ripened under the gray skies of England from June to 
September have no equal for sweetness in the United 
States. 

Climate has such an important bearing upon compara- 
tive household economics that in this connexion I offer 
again a comment of the witty Englishwoman who evidently 
knoji^s her America as does Baedeker. 

" One could live like a lord in Florida on five dollars a 
week ; vegetables and fruits seemed, like Jonah's gourd, to 
spring up in the night ; the cow cost nine dollars, and 
yielded creamy milk ; the rent only ten dollars a month 
for a good house with the proverbial three acres for the 



142 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

cow ; a whole chicken costs twenty cents, and a side of 
mutton, weighing twelve pounds, only one dollar and fifty 
cents. Society was charming, and it was bliss to be alive 
from October to April in bowers of roses, lilies, camellias, 
and such flowering views as once seen can never be for- 
gotten. Half the year ! but oh for the other half ! " 

For our Southern States have a summer season like the 
climate of Italy or even Northern India. 

A little farther afield, but still not astray from the 
subject, comes the question of doctors' bills for the treat- 
ment of malaria and typhoid fever so sadly familiar to 
American households — the " co-existent to that sunshine 
so productive of glorious fruits and vegetables, gifts of 
a seemingly beneficent climate." And some one has 
added, "When melons of forty, even sixty pounds are 
piled high in the markets and luscious peaches are only 
twenty-five cents for a big basket, many a Rachel is 
weeping for her children, for the mortality of children in all 
classes is appalling." 

In the budget of the professional man which follows 
there will appear another important bearing of climate 
upon household expenditure. This is the item which 
covers board and lodging for the wife and children at the 
seashore for three months. 

The summer outing at ;^ioo would be replaced in 
an English budget of this kind by a few weeks* " holiday " 
at an expense of £2^ at the outside. But the professional 
man whose family is allowed to endure an American 
summer in town is rare, so that the cost of food in a budget 
here must be stated for nine months. In this case, it is 
calculated that the head of the family spent £^ a month 
for his meals while his wife and children were in the country, 
and this is included in the item of £160 for food. 

Under sundries were classed the expenditures for wines, 
liquors, flowers, and cabs, and it will seem disproportionately 
small on an income of ;^i20o. But wine is not served in 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 143 

this type of American home, except at dinners of ceremony, 
which are few and far between, and cab hire is so pro- 
hibitively high as to remove it as an ordinary temptation 
for indulgence. My chief grumble against London on a 
recent visit was that it is a wilderness of distances, and 
though cab-fares are cheap, their sum total became a heavy 
item. But on reaching New York, I found myself taxed 
eighteen shillings for a " hack " to carry me and my 
belongings from steamer to train, a distance not so great 
as two shillings' worth in London. 

There are no cab-stands in the residence sections of 
cities, and a cab ordered from a "livery-stable" (public 
hiring stable) costs from six to eight shillings. So for 
most of the goings about the tramway serves, and men 
take their wives to the theatre in the "street car," and 
even dining out, except in very bad weather, does not 
necessitate a cab. 

As to flowers in the home, be he rich or poor, wise, 
great, or a hermit, the Englishman will have flowers on his 
dining-table, but they are far from indispensable to the 
American. 

You do not see the " nosegay " stands about the 
American cities ; there are no great " flower markets," and 
many months in the year, I venture to state, this home 
quoted, as many others of its standard, has a candelabrum 
with coloured candle-shades as a centre piece in the dining- 
room in place of flowers, and only rarely a bunch of 
blossoms in the drawing-room. 

The " dress " item in this budget includes that of the 
daughter of ten years. The money spent on the dress 
of an American girl would astound the girl-child of an 
English household, and no doubt incur the English mother's 
disapproval. But the little girl is the idol of the American 
home. Her bedroom is made a frilly bower, and care and 
taste and money are lavished upon her frocks and lingerie. 
From the day of her birth she is the pet and pride of the 



144 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

household, and, in comparison, the English girl seems 
dressed and sheltered like a nun — which is no doubt much 
more wholesome. But there is a daintiness given the little 
girl in America which generally clings. 

Any one who would not render tribute to the bein 
soignee Englishwoman, to her classic charm in a Liberty- 
flowing simplicity of costume, or the splendid severity 
of a velvet frock, must be blind. But I have seen an 
American woman who did not have a single good feature 
pass for "pretty" and "charming" just because of an 
ineffable daintiness. Perhaps the little daughter's ruffles 
and nainsook may not be as unwise an expense as it 
seems. 

The clothing for the boy in this family, which is bought 
ready-made, and the outfit for the master of the house, 
proportionately cost much less ; but that, too, is quite 
characteristic of the American division of income, and 
yet the man always appears well dressed. His " business " 
suit costs him from £Z to i^io, and for frock-coat, waist- 
coat, and trousers he pays from £\2 to £i^. 

The item of *' education " indicates only the music- 
lessons for the children, as otherwise they are taught in 
one of the public schools. 

This budget has been selected, not to illustrate how 
cheaply one may obtain luxury in the United States, but 
as typical of what is considered necessary luxury in the 
"comfortably off" home in a large city. 

Budget of Professional Man's Family 
(Father, Mother, and two children) 

I s. d. 

Rent 200 o o 

Water tax i 12 o 

Fuel and gas 3500 

Food 185 8 o 

Carried forward . 422 o o 



HOUSEKEEPING EXPENDITURES 145 

£ s. d. 

Brought forward . 422 o o 

Personal property tax * i 12 o 

Life insurance 40 o o 

Fire insurance i o o 

Railway travel 1500 

Christmas and birthday presents . . . . 50 o o 

Books and periodicals 500 

Tobacco . . . . . . . . . 25 o o 

Boots for family 10 o o 

Tailor . . . 40 o o 

Dress 125 o o 

Ice 700 

Church 10 o o 

Telephone 9 12 o 

Club 10 o o 

Summer outing . . . . . . . 100 o o 

Dentist 600 

Physician's service . . . . . . . 20 o o 

Servants 91 16 o 

Education 20 o o 

Sundries 800 

Additional furniture. Keeping up linens, china, etc. 79 o o 

Total expenditure . . 1096 o o 
Surplus .... 104 o o 

Total Income . . 1200 o o 

Every nation has two recurring nightmares — the growth 
of dangerous forms of luxury among its people, and the 
decline of the birth rate — and Uncle Sam is no exception. 
He has periods of being absolutely certain that half of 
the population of the United States are living beyond 
their incomes, and with childlike naivete he confesses his 
fears to the world, and his reiterated groans over " the mad 
endeavour of persons of moderate income to follow the 
pace set by the wealthy," has gained us a reputation for 
high prices and reckless housekeeping which is far from 

* Household possessions, exceeding ^200 in value, are taxed in, 
the United States. 



146 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

justifiable. The lady who is bent upon seeming richer 
than she really is is a world-wide type, and while only 
occasional invectives against the extravagant luxury of 
its people appear in the press of England or Germany, 
I doubt whether the stuff Uncle Sam's bad dreams are 
made of is any different from those that settle about the 
wise and cautious heads in London or Berlin. 



CHAPTER VII 
SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 

FROM a small city up in the State, a mother took 
her schoolgirl daughter, aged nine, to spend her 
spring holiday among the sights of New York. 
The child had been coached on the Art Galleries, the 
Museum of National History, and the wonders of the 
Zoo in Central Park, until she knew perfectly the points 
in the educational programme her parent had arranged for 
her. Yet after luncheon, the day of their arrival, when 
they stood on the threshold of their hotel, with the 
metropolis roar in their ears, and the mother asked, " Well, 
what shall we see this afternoon ? " the child ignored her 
cue and responded — 

" I tell you what let's do, mamma ! Let's go down 
town to the shops and just spend moneyy The little 
woman had expressed the acme of attraction of the big 
city to the American woman. 

I have yet to meet the woman from Chicago who 

will not remark, after scant preliminaries of conversation, 

" Of course, you've seen our Marshall Pleld's store ? " and 

on your enthusiastic endorsement of this wonder of wonders, 

or your confession of dark ignorance, are you judged dis- 

] cerning or benighted, for this great store is to the Chicago 

woman the epitome of her city's greatness. 

I And, by the way, all shops are *' stores'* in America. 

• There is no such fine distinction, as in London, between 

147 



148 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

the " shops " and " The Stores," as applied to the " Army 
and Navy " institution there. 

Every large city in America has " America's largest 
and grandest store" in its midst, or perhaps several of 
them — if one is to accept page advertisements in the daily 
papers of that city. New York, Chicago, Boston, and 
Philadelphia, each has its " Whiteley's " and its " Bon 
Marche " in types that really go the originals one better 
in lavish display and their elaborate system of bargain 
sales. 

■ Is it any wonder, then, that the average American 
woman literally " haunts " the shops of her city ? Perhaps 
nothing betrays the primitive instinct of a nation like 
shopping. It represents the acquisition instinct, the love 
of barter, a sense of beauty and the feminine thirst for 
adornment ; and while the American woman may not 
excel the normal limits of these characteristics, the 
element of chance always enlivens the shopping game in 
America, and shopping becomes a never-ending quest 
for the thing that is apparently sold for less than its 
worth. 

Simple extravagance is curable, but the mania to buy 
cheap, with desirability of the object a somewhat nebulous 
quality, is incurable. The watching for the season's sales 
in England, the French woman's keen eye for the decline 
of some material she wants into a " remnant," has much of 
the business capacity and organization faculty in it. 

But there is nothing so masculine in the American 
woman's idea of the mission of the shops. The American 
woman with the shopping habit ; the habit which drives 
her to a minute perusal of the columns of preposterous 
reductions, v/hich herald the weekly " bargain day " in her 
city ; which drives her from the breakfast-table to the 
shops by the elevated train, subway, or trolley line ; which 
makes her all day long, stopping only for the hastiest kind 
of luncheon, a part of the three-deep mob about the 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 149 

counters and tables on which the bargains from frying- 
pans to silk waists are tossed — this is the shopping habit 
reduced almost to a mild aberration. It cannot be said 
that vanity increases the disease, for among the chronic 
shoppers which throng our shops, they are comparatively 
few who are out to cater in excess to their personal 
ambitions. To many, certainly, " home " is always written 
at the back of their minds ; but if the " home " needed 
ordinary dishes, and there should be an advertised sale of 
jardinieres reduced from ;^i to los., it would be the bargain 
counter that would receive their patronage. The American 
woman is as unable to resist the seductions of bargain 
counters as the English woman her tea-cup. It is the 
bargain counter that is largely responsible for the great 
effort necessary in America to live below one's income. 
The advertising manager employed by each large shop is 
its impresario, as it were. 

Advertising has risen to the dignity of a profession in 
America, and the man who exploits in type the lure of 
the bargain counter, has a business as honourable and 
exacting as the man reporting the latest murder trial for 
a great daily. Large department stores the country over 
easily devote ;f 50,000 annually to advertising bargains. 

Monday happens to be " bargain day " in New York, 
though Boston has Saturday, Philadelphia and Washington 
Friday, and Chicago lives in a state of continual bargain 
orgy ; and a New York advertising man spoke modestly 
and naively of his work in preparation for the conflict. 

" In writing Sunday advertisements to catch the 
suburban trade," he began, " we lose sight of our wealthy 
customers, so to speak. We address ourselves to the 
thrifty middle class, the class which is the bone and sinew 
of this country ; which will slave, if necessary, to bring up 
its children well and dress them in good clothes, which 
represents an income of from £^ a week up to five or 
six times that amount, and which, out of town, lives in a 



150 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

seven- or eight-roomed house and keeps one * hired girl,' as 
she used to be called in New England, or no servant at all. 
These people living out of town, look over the suburban 
and the New York papers more carefully on Sunday than 
at any other time, probably because they have more 
leisure on that day to read, and it rests with the adver- 
tisers whether or not readers read what makes them want 
to take an early train to town Monday morning. 

" Pay-day with this class is generally Saturday, meaning 
that there is more ready cash on hand Monday morning 
than usual. How to get some of this cash is the business 
of the advertising manager, and it can't be done by follow- 
ing ordinary methods. So to further his campaign the 
advertising manager conducts it very much as the front 
pages of newspapers are conducted. What is put on these 
pages ? The news, the beats, the * scoops.' A newspaper 
has its reporters, its writers of specials, its editorial writers 
and managing editor. Well, so has the advertising depart- 
ment of one of the great stores. For instance, before I 
send out an advertisement it has passed through five hands. 
We have reporters, special writers, proof-readers, under a 
managing editor. It is not enough to offer the public 
a bargain. The offer must be made convincingly. 

" Now, as to a * scoop,' which is a never-failing drawer 

to suburbanites : one of the duties of our reporters is to 

look up attractions featured by other stores and, finding 

they are selling briskly, to tell me about them. If we 

have the same thing in stock or something like it, we can 

follow suit at the same figure or a trifle lower ; but this is 

not a * scoop.' What we call a scoop is, suppose we 

haven't the thing or anything like it in stock, to have a 

more attractive, a better variety made for us, provided it 

is a piece of neckwear, a waist, or anything which may be 

manufactured quickly, and advertise it at a figure which 

puts it in the bargain class. That one thing may bring us 

a rush. With dozens of out-of-town readers it may be 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 151 

the one thing which turns the scale in favour of their 
coming to town Monday morning." 

Add to this Napoleonic campaign against the middle 
class pocket-book the fact that the interiors of American 
shops have the gayest aspect of any in the world, decorated 
as they are for every possible holiday of national or local 
moment, from thousands of caged canary birds and Easter 
lilies for Easter to streamers and artificial roses for every 
anniversary of the founding of the business ; and that an 
electric fountain playing, and automatic pianos operating, 
and samples of food in free distribution add a perennial 
air of festival and excitement — and what chance has the 
call of thrift and a commonplace little home against such 
allurement ? So our shops are crowded as no other shops 
in similar civilization, and crowded by women whose type 
abroad would find visits to the department shop in their 
large cities of almost historic rarity to them. Here the 
women of very small means form the staple of custom in 
almost all the large shops, and clasping handbags firmly 
by the handle and frequently protesting youngsters by the 
hand, they sweep on from shop to shop, the eager purpose 
of the bargain-hunt in every eye. 

When one watches the return of these victors from the 
bargain table, one cannot but speculate upon the condition 
of the homes they have left all day, and upon the probable 
evening meal to be served there ; but perhaps approxi- 
mately the same class about London and in France and 
Germany would have spent the day gossiping away their 
neighbour's reputation or worse. Perhaps the shopping 
habit is as innocuous an outlet as possible for national 
energy and love of chance. 

As regards the comparative prices, it is undoubtedly 
possible for the middle class to dress far better and cheaper 
in America than abroad. Our tariff on kid gloves and 
fine laces and delicate fabrics make their prices such that 
the American woman who has bought them in London 



152 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

and in Paris for from a half to two-thirds less than the 
American price, rages and declares that she could save 
the cost of the trip through buying her clothes abroad. 
But she couldn't. That is, if she is a woman of moderate 
means and dresses accordingly. 

Some one has said that of all the women in the world, 
the American women look best in the morning, the 
Parisian in the afternoon, and the English women in the 
evening, and the shops of each country would seem to 
reflect this condition. 

The ready-made, plain walking suit in the American 
shop for $20, $30, and $40, is comparatively better cut and 
better designed than those for the same price in European 
markets. You can get the same type of suit in London, 
undoubtedly of better woollen material which will wear 
longer and better, for about £1 less, but the fit will be of 
the tip-tilted skirt and narrow-chest jacket style in which 
London ladies' tailors seem to glory, and the American 
suit will lead in effectivenees and smartness over anything 
of the price in London or Paris. 

An American woman remarked that in her experience 
there were two kinds of made-to-measure suits to be had 
in London : those that require talcum powder and a shoe- 
horn to adjust, and those that can be slipped on over your 
head without unbuttoning — the resulting humiliation alone 
assures you which type of tailor you have encountered. 
And while it is perfectly true that a suit made to measure 
in London for ;^ 10 would cost ;^ 15 if made to order in 
America, the American suit would have £s worth better 
shoulders and hang of skirt, and the important fact to the 
middle-class shoppers remains that you can buy in the 
American shops a j^io ready-to-wear suit which will 
compare most favourably with a suit made to measure at 
£16 in England. The material will be inferior, but the 
American woman of all classes is a prey to style, and 
does not wear her clothes as long as the English woman. 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 153 

When it comes to ready-to-wear evening clothes, the 
houses in London making a speciality of such frocks, can 
find no rival in America. Outside of very exclusive shops 
with " Rue de la Paix " prices and worse, the display of 
ready-made evening frocks in the American shops is laugh- 
ably provincial. Evening frocks are not in common use 
except among the rich here, and so, naturally, there is no 
type of evening frocks at once in good taste and finish and 
of moderate price to be found in American shops. After- 
noon toilettes, as displayed in the American shops, are 
rarely of the best designs. The comfortably-off woman 
has hers made by a dressmaker, and, owing to the con- 
spicuous absence of social occasions when such a soft 
frock would be worn among the middle-classes, there is 
little demand, and what lies betv/een the tailor suit and 
the imported models in formal frocks is an impossible 
clutter of cheap cashmeres and nets with impossible lace 
yokes and collars ear-high. 

The woman who wears Parisian gowns goes abroad 
often, and prefers to buy them in Paris, and outside of a 
few French model toilettes, which the buyers frankly admit 
are for purposes of exhibition to " sweeten " the ordinary 
stock, there is to be found little in the ready-made costume 
line except the tailor suits of linen, silk, and cloth, the 
separate cloaks, and a limited selection of velvets and 
dressy frocks. 

And this leads to one distinction that I think should 
be made clear in a description of our shops. While 
America's glittering shops display many more good articles 
at a high price, the best at the highest price has no market 
in American stores. This is true of women's ready-made 
clothing. We display more expensive articles than the 
shops abroad, but we have nothing to compare with the 
wonderful creations which are stored out of sight from the 
casual customer in apparently unattractive stores abroad. 

We say at once that the general standard of expense 



154 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

and luxury is less in England than here. The women's 
clothes, the average entertainment among the rich, do not 
compare in extravagance with ours. Yet to these generali- 
zations we must make exceptions. For instance, it is 
true that the average Englishwoman spends little on her 
dress ; that the average Englishwoman is badly dressed — 
twenty-five pounds a year, I have been told, is thought 
enough for an unmarried woman of good position — and 
yet there are dresses to be bought, and they are bought 
by English women, splendid almost spectacular dresses, 
that can outdo anything the management of our most 
marvellous department stores ever imagined. 

Some one has said practically this of English and 
American beauty: Here you will see more pretty faces 
in a day than you see in a year in England ! But when you 
do see a beautiful Englishwoman, you never forget it — she 
is nobly, healthily, exuberantly beautiful, as our women are 
not. 

However true this statement may be in the field of 
aesthetics, it is undoubtedly true that such things as 
wines, cigars, and coffee can be bought in London of a 
quality of which we know nothing, and at prices that even 
an extravagant American public will not pay. This has 
been explained by the fact that we have not as yet any 
great body of connoisseurs ; we have a great number of 
people who like good things and will pay for them — no 
great class perfectly drilled in the art of " doing without " 
as in England and Europe — but in England it is part of 
a gentleman's education to know the best, so there are 
certain things with which we cannot provide our guests in 
perfection because we cannot buy them here ; the best 
has gone to London. 

But to come back to the provision for the eternal 
feminine in our shops. There are certain necessaries of 
dress in which the American market provides a grade that 
in quality and price excels every other country. This is 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS i55 

particularly true of our machine-made blouses and under- 
linens. The fact is, there is no place in the world where 
such dainty machine-made garments of all sorts can be 
found at such low prices as in American department 
stores. 

For instance, while hand-made articles are high here, 
and if a woman is able to pay £2, for a dainty and attrac- 
tive lingerie blouse or £2 for a chemise or night-gown, she 
can do very much better in London than in New York. 
The ;^3 blouse will be £2 in London, and lingerie half the 
American price ; but the woman who is accustomed to 
paying 6s. each for her dainty surplice-shaped night-gowns 
and 8s. for her smart machine-made summer blouse should 
not dream of buying these garments in London. 

For these prices she cannot find anything she will be 
willing to wear. I remember going on a persistent hunt 
for moderate-priced underlinen in London one summer, 
and as the high-necked and long-sleeved garments of 
horribly stout material were pressed upon me again and 
again *' as remarkably good at the cost," I began to 
appreciate that the patterns in underwear in England have 
not changed in twenty years. 

And I was as afraid to state any plea for something a 
little more modern and coquettish as I had been to ask 
my stern New England grandmother years ago for ribbons 
in my small underbody, knowing full well what unmaidenly 
immodesties she considered them. 

I saw a sign in London's smart shopping district which 
announced : " American shirt-waists by American cutters," 
but, on investigating the product, I came to the conclusion 
that the cutters had lost their cunning on the trip across. 
At least the waists did not compare with the tailored lines 
of the variety I had seen come unheralded into American 
shops that spring and at half the cost. 

The bargain counters of American shops are simply 
frothed with an infinite variety of charmingly cut and 



156 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

trimmed garments on which the machine stitching is so 
cleverly done as to resemble handwork, and the price is 
not beyond a moderate purse. Of course, they do not wear 
well, nothing like as well as the indestructible English 
garments, and there is a tendency to shoddy display in 
their cheap adornment which, in the recent craze for the 
"peek-a-boo " blouse, became flagrant. The last abuse of 
the lingerie blouse was the wearing of a large bow of 
coloured ribbon on the front beneath these "ostensible 
bodices," and respectable, middle-class women accepted 
this demi-monde-ism without a blush. But it was short- 
lived, and the average American woman who takes thought 
of her lingerie next to the Frenchwoman, is more blessed 
than she realises in being able to acquire effective lingerie 
that has neither the exalted cost of French convent 
product nor the conservative clumsiness of the machined 
garments in England and abroad. 

It is the same with many other articles. If you always 
wear silk stockings, by all means get them in London. 
But if you are accustomed to wear cotton or lisle, and want 
to get the finest and daintiest possible for your shilling or 
IS. 5d., buy them in New York. 

If you have only loi". to pay for a pair of pretty little 
slippers, you can get them better in New York than else- 
where ; but our shops have nothing to compare with the 
bead-work and embroidery of the high-grade slippers sold 
in Vienna or Paris. But the average shoe found in the 
American shops is better and cheaper than the same grade 
anywhere else in the world. 

An Englishwoman seeing the American women bathing 
at one of our seaside resorts, remarked that after all there 
did not seem to be such a discrimination of nature against 
the English woman in the matter of feet as she had 
believed. 

" It's your splendidly shaped shoes that make the 
American woman's feet look so much trimmer and slimmer 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 157 

They're just as large as ours, you know, without the 
shoes ! " she concluded. 

American shoes may " let in the wet and so cost much 
higher," as an Englishwoman complained to me ; but she 
who made the objection never wore the traditional iron- 
bound, water-proof English boots, but affected, as so many 
Englishwomen do, I find, the thin-soled, high-heeled shoes 
of English manufacture, and I did not think the objection 
well sustained. Particularly as a pair of American shoes 
bought in America, plus the goloshes (which the American 
woman expects to wear in damp weather and the English- 
woman does not, possibly because it would take a lightning 
change artist to make such adaptation to British climate), is 
no more expensive than the man-o*-war type of boots the 
Englishwoman is supposed to advocate. 

Toys are cheaper in England, but as almost all our 
supply is " made in Germany " our tariff must shoulder 
the blame for that situation for Santa Claus. 

All the French toilette preparations and perfumes and 
soaps are of course much more expensive in the American 
shops on the same account ; and as the American woman 
aspires to these from a class where in England the ambition 
would be unheard of, she feels this expense, and if she ever 
happens in London, and discovers that the violet powder 
for which she has been paying 3s. yd. a package is on all 
the shop counters there for 2s., and the extract for which 
the American price is 5s. yd, a bottle is offered at 4s., she 
naturally concludes that she could live and keep house in 
England for what it takes to fit up her toilet-table at home. 
If you think this is a hyperbole, I can only refer you to the 
average countrywoman of mine who has had a few months* 
trip abroad. " Oh, for an American income and life in 
England ! " they all say ; and this would undoubtedly 
work an economic simplification higher up in the scale of 
wealth, for the wealthy can get more for their wealth in 
English life and in English shops ; but comparative figures, 



158 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

which I have followed with keen curiosity, bear me out in 
the statement that American shops cater to the middle- 
class, and that under no other conditions can middle-class 
comfort and desires be less expensively met than from the 
output of American shops. 

Americans who have gone to live in London on a small 
income have mournfully assured me that this is so. 

There is little aesthetic merit about the exterior of 
American stores. In architecture, they are saved by 
their enormous glass show windows — really glass-enclosed 
rooms — from the Bastile-like dignity of the Army and 
Navy Stores in London. But above this first-floor display 
they are generally of factory architecture. 

The show windows resemble the various exhibits in the 
Eden Musee. Instead of the stacked and price-marked 
display of garments in the unattractive windows of English 
shops, there will be often furniture arranged in an elaborate 
series of apartments, like the apartments of a private house, 
each piece having its appropriate and effective position, and 
the figures of mistress, maid, and children (sometimes even 
Monsieur appears, though even in shop windows the male 
is subordinated in America), are posed about, wearing 
fetching garments. Then, too, American shops make 
every effort to render their interiors of palatial effect. 

"Unsurpassed, magnificent of equipment and decora- 
tion," "tapestried emporiums," "marbled and painted 
house of world-wide merchandise," are types of their 
modest confessions along this line. Some of the lunch 
rooms, particularly in the Chicago stores, are decorated 
in amazing luxury and artistic sense, and there are private 
dining-rooms where luncheon-parties are given as at a 
fashionable hotel or restaurant. 

This feature is no doubt a concession to the fact that 
the moderately well off in America entertain in public 
instead of by home hospitality as in England. For the 
want of proper service in the home, a luncheon can be 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 159 

given in a hotel with less expense and no effort and more 
show than in the average American home. Women's club 
houses in America are rareties, and to ask a few^ friends to 
lunch with you in one of these more elaborate department 
store lunch-rooms, in a way, takes the place of the club 
dining-room. 

While we are touching this corner of entertainments, 

I should like to notice an English custom which seems to 

me excellent, and which has never found favour over here. 

In London there are always a certain number of those 

large furnished private houses which are rented night 

after night for the purposes of entertaining. Here we 

save ourselves trouble by going to one of the large hotels 

or restaurants, where the giving of such parties is perfectly 

understood ; yet there is something very delightful about 

( the atmosphere of a private house. But the feeling for it 

j apparently has not come to America yet. Some one 

I remarked that the Italians in New York's East Side 

I manifest in short order at least one characteristic of 

I American civilization — when they want entertainment, 

I they hire a hall arid give a hall. 

But this is wandering beyond even the six miles of 
counters which the typical department store is supposed 
to have. Back to those six miles of counters and 650 feet 
I of glass show windows! The average department store, 
j beside the opportunity to get money value for anything 
I in the gamut of purchasing, from silks to molasses, and 
from nails to saddlery, offers to its patrons, free of all 
j charges, parlours where periodicals and writing materials 
^may be had ; a children's nursery, where children may be 

I left with capable nurses, and entertained with the latest 
toys and a sand-pile (a perfectly splendid place for the 
^ child to get whooping-cough and measles), while the 
jmother tours the bargain counters ; an emergency hospital 
jwith a trained nurse ; and always a free art exhibition, 
jsuch as it is, though sometimes a really noted canvas will 



i6o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

be on view. There are also sections which resemble the 
lobby of a hotel, with its tributaries of public telephone 
booths, telegraph offices, post-office quarters, and theatre 
tickets and manicuring " parlour " features. 

Just inside each of the main entrances to New York 
department stores the shopper discovers, in a conspicuous 
position, a flat wire basket filled with cards. Having com- 
plied with the printed invitation to take one, he finds 
himself provided with a miniature directory of the establish- 
ment. There are usually from 120 to 130 items in the 
directory, and as the card is scarcely larger than a woman's 
visiting card, it should prove all the guide, philosopher, and 
friend needed, through its compact information ; yet the 
majestic floor-walker does not seem to have been deprived 
of any of his prerogatives, and you see him as pompously 
condescending in his directions here as abroad. 

A large department store in Chicago has its aisles 
named as the streets of the town, which is mildly amusing, 
even to a native, and always courteously noted as " very 
interesting " by the visiting foreigner. 

Chicago department stores are larger, more numerous, 
and transact more business than do those of Eastern cities. 
But there is an air of naiveU about the Chicago depart- 
ment stores, no better illustrated, perhaps, than by an 
incident of the beginning of one of them. These mammoth 
enterprises do not, as a rule, ever emulate Topsy's un- 
authenticated growth ; they spring full-armed from some 
syndicate pocket-book, and when the doors of this fully 
equipped palace were opened for business, the first person 
to enter was a newsboy, a ten-year-old street arab — 
quick-witted, quick-footed, quick-eyed, electric with vitality 
— typical of his kind. He was seized upon as an omen of 
good luck by the management, rigged out in new apparel, 
complete to every detail, submitted to a hair-cut, given a 
purse containing some silver coin, and then escorted to the 
place he called home by three ladies in a carriage, all of 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS i6i 

which he accepted philosophically with the remark, "Every- 
thing goes." 

The Bon Marche is supposed to have been the birth- 
place of this tremendously consequential system of 
composite shopkeeping by which, as some one has said, 
"it was calculated that a bewilderment of customers 
would result profitably ; " but America did not have to go 
out of this country for a prototype. For the department 
store of our cities is only a colossal expansion of the 
" general merchandise " store which was the centre of 
life, commercial and social, in our village communities. 
These country merchants had attained substantial glory, 
particularly in the Middle-West and West. The develop- 
ment of the prairies brought rich opportunity to the 
country merchant. He entered with the fore-front of the 
tide of emigration from our Eastern homes. He became 
post-master and " notary public " of the settlement. The 
" opera house " was in the second story of his store. He 
(was a provincial merchant prince. Then came the 
development of our great mail-order department store. 
To understand the attitude of the small shopkeepers 
towards the mail-order house, only a few facts concerning 
this new institution as it has worked out in the mercantile 
field of America are necessary. In the first place, 
10,000,000 Americans shop by mail nowadays, and 
1300,000,000 is spent in this way each year. There 
'ire two great mail-order houses in Chicago, neither of 
which will sell a penny's worth to any one living within 
he city limits, who have no show-cases, and no travelling 
alesmen, but which represent a cross between a retail 
apartment store and a wholesale warehouse, with Uncle 
am's mail for the counters, and an enormous catalogue 
king the place of display windows, show cases, and array 
pf well-dressed clerks. Everything is done by mail ; 
Everything is done on a cash basis. 

One of these houses received over 18,000,000 letters 

M 



i62 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

last year, containing $77,000,000. The business was 
secured by 4,000,000 catalogues of 1400 pages each. 
Even the opening of the letters is done by machinery, or 
the mail could never be kept up with. In the words of 
the proprietor, they have sent '* talking machines to 
Persia, wagons to Jerusalem, and trousseaus to Con- 
stantinople," besides having filled orders for everything 
imaginable, from breakfast food to parlour furniture, among 
the 55,000,000 in America living outside our cities. 

As the firm is now allowed to buy pre-cancelled postage 
stamps, and fill its own mail-bags, the store is practically 
its own post-office. It may not be out of place in a book 
on American characteristics to mention the fact that the 
proprietor of this house at fourteen was sweeping up 
shavings in a cooper's shop for one shilling a day, and 
to-day has 6200 employees to do his bidding. His mail- 
order store, which began business over a livery stable, now 
occupies a building that covers a floor space of 50 acres. 

When a rural patron of one of these mail-order houses 
visits the cities, and presents himself at the enormous 
warehouse from which he has been doing his long-distance 
shopping, he is treated as an honoured guest, and, with a 
guide, inspects the system from A to Z. In one instance, 
"tickets to the tower," marked one shilling, are dis- 
tributed, and the mail constituent given a free ride in the 
lift, to a point where he can see the city spread in panorama. 
He cannot purchase anything until he goes back home to 
the country, but he feels himself a patron of a great 
establishment, and that he is given all the advantages of 
selection of any one of the city dwellers. 

Moreover, the house encourages correspondence from 
its patrons, and one proprietor in New York told me that 
they received long letters from lonely ranchers — one of 
whom made inquiry as to whether the firm could supply 
him with a wife — or from farmers' wives in serious 
consultation over purchases and plans. 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 163 

So this postal commerce has become almost a national 
habit ; and who can wonder ? Think of the farmer's wife 
in North Dakota who can buy in New York, and know 
just as well what she is buying as if she could personally 
invade the shopping district — thanks to the persuasive 
eloquence of the mail-order house catalogue. One of 
these women explained, further, to me that these last 
year's catalogues — about ten times as voluminous as those 
from the Bon Marche — supplied her little girls with paper 
dolls and boys with amusement in reading the description 
of firearms, while her husband perused the harness and 
farm implement and fertilizer and poultry food depart- 
ment by the hour. Such points should not be overlooked 
in the advantages of the mail-order system. 

On the other hand, the goods are selected for country 
people, and the prices are made as low as the buying 
of immense quantities can force them, so it is often true 
that articles are sold there for less than the modest 
country merchants can buy them of his wholesale jobbing 
houses. 

And between the lure of buying from the city, and the 

slight economic advantage of buying by mail, even these 

articles which might have been purchased at the local 

store, the local shopkeepers become effectually snuffed. 

I In a newspaper of a Western town appears the following 

editorial on the citizens gone mad over mail-shopping : — 
j " When your baby died, did the mail-order house send 
j its sympathy ? When your crop failed, did it offer to 

carry you awhile ? When your daughter married, did it 
I send a present ? Has it helped build the churches, the 

school-houses, or the bridges of the community ? Stand 

by your home merchant, who has done all these things. 

Help home industries and home people." 

In anothern Western town a daily paper undertook a 

movement to compel home buying by publishing each day 

the names of shoppers who went or sent to a large city 

I 



i64 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

forty miles away. It was an heroic measure, since it 
naturally lost the subscriptions of all the accused ; but it 
gradually won back patronage, since, in a small community, 
a citizen cannot afford to have it advertised he is striking 
at the base of his neighbour's livelihood, even to advantage 
himself; and the shops of this town are now as well 
e quipped and prosperous as any but the first-water stores 
in European cities. Indeed, even with the mail-order 
rivalry at its keenest, the foreigner always remarks the 
size and variety of the shops in out-of-the-way towns in 
the United States. It is amazing to contrast the array of 
shops in an average American village main street with the 
paucity in moderate-sized towns of the beaten tourist 
track abroad. 

Some way or other — by mail order, by personal tour 
of bargain tables or by gossip-laden village shop — the 
American woman must shop. Shopping is a national 
characteristic. Nine out of every ten women who go 
abroad, go with shopping as a paramount inspiration, 
while even the exalted ones who would answer " art 
galleries " or " sight seeing " to the direct query as to 
objective points, have bargain tables as a distinct feature 
in the back-shop of their plans. Even the stout American 
who has Marienbad or Carlsbad as an objective point, 
looks beyond to Paris and Vienna shops, where she may 
effectively adorn the result of her heroic treatment. 

The utter amazement of the American woman when 
her foreign guest, who has " come out to see the States/' 
does not " hot foot " it for our shops, her own prime motive 
in travel, is very amusing. 

But the real sufferer from the constant expansion of 
the scope of department stores is the small shops in the 
city. This is particularly true in case of the gradual 
monopoly of the dry grocery trade by the department 
stores. It is estimated that the average grocery depart- 
ment in a large shop has a business equal to that of one 




\ COMMON OBJECT IN THE CUL NTRV 

ON HIS ROUNDS 



: THE TRAVELLING BUTCHER 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 165 

hundred ordinary grocers doing an average business oi £iS 
per day. 

Some of the large stores, as in London, are even out- 
doing the little " greengrocer " in his line of perishable 
stock, in offering fresh vegetables and meats among their 
departments. 

One kind-hearted "greengrocer" loaned £1 to a 
neighbour in distress, and to whom he had already allowed 
£$ credit from his stock, and that night saw a department 
store wagon drive up to her house and deliver groceries 
bought at the large shop with the money she had borrowed 
from him. 

The department store as a labour-supply agency is 
potent. In the main shopping district of New York there 
are about thirty thousand girls and women employed in 
the dry goods and department stores, between two and 
three thousand being employed in each of the larger 
shops. And I believe in no other country do employers 
make such a conscientious effort to preserve the health, 
happiness, and character of their employees, as the 
proprietors of America's department stores. 

In one shop a school is maintained on one of the upper 
floors for the younger girls, who receive free tuition in the 
English branches during slack periods of the day and 
after hours, and promotion in the shop is based partly on 
the standing in this class-room work. 

In many department stores lunch-rooms are supported 
by the management, where healthful and nourishing food 
is provided the employees at prices which do not nearly 
cover its cost. "We figure on a loss of about ;£iooo a 
year in the lunch-room," one manager remarked, quite 
philosophically. A room is usually fitted up more or less 
adequately for an emergency hospital, and the doctor, who 
is paid an annual salary, must give the store calls prefer- 
ence over all others in his practice, and also hold office 
hours in the shop every day, when employees may come 



i66 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

to him for consultation with no charge except for medicines. 
There is a nurse in attendance. 

Many, though not all, of the large shops provide a 
recreation room for the women and girls employed, where 
there are plenty of comfortable easy chairs, a piano, books 
and magazines on the tables, and a waxed floor where 
they may dance or rest and chat when lunch is finished. 
This is not in those few exotic plants of labour considera- 
tion like the noted chocolate works in England, and of 
which we have a few counterparts in America, but rather 
a common feature in the ordinary department store in our 
large cities, where every inch of floor space could be turned 
to commercial advantage. 

Wealthier stores often maintain summer homes in the 
country for their girls, who have their vacation of two 
weeks arranged for them in relays, and they generally pay 
no board or a nominal sum to take away any sensitiveness 
over charity they might have. I know of one shop where 
the wife or daughters of the proprietor are on hand to 
welcome the sales girls as they arrive at the country home, 
which is not large enough to suggest an institution, but 
spacious enough to give every one a chance during the 
season. 

I know one large shop in New York where the women 
and girls are not permitted to leave by the employees' 
entrance at night, since it opens upon an alley infected 
with idle men loafing about, but are dismissed through 
the customers' entrance on to the well-lighted business 
street where the young girls' safety is assured. 

Another firm employs detectives to protect attractive 
young girls in their employ from the machinations of the 
so-called ** mashers" and young men about town. 

There is no offensive and defensive organization among 
shop assistants in America — trades unions not having the 
legal recognition here as in England — but there is generally 
a benefit association formed among the employees of each 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 167 

shop, and the money collected under the fines system, 
which does prevail here, though, I think, a little more just 
in execution than in England, is almost always passed 
over to this employees' benefit fund. 

The Federal Government cannot, of course, legislate in 
matters governing the employment of the women and 
children except in places under federal control, as the 
district of Columbia, which holds the national capital, and 
the Territories ; but the States with large cities and large 
shops have passed laws along this line that are both rigid 
and comprehensive. The general proviso is that to be a 
regular clerk in a department shop a girl must be over 
sixteen, though cash-girls and messengers may be fourteen 
or fifteen. The employee under sixteen is not allowed by 
these laws to work more than fifty-four hours a week, or 
more than nine hours in one day, while, over sixteen, the 
work is sixty hours for a maximum of work in a week and 
ten hours in one day, except to make shorter some other 
day of the week. The shops almost universally close at 
half-past five in the afternoon, and from forty-five to sixty 
minutes is allowed for lunch. Work over-time during the 
rush of Christmas holiday season is permissible, provided 
there is extra payment. 

Moreover, New York's example in forming a Con- 
sumer's League, the work of public spirited and philan- 
thropic women, is being followed most effectually in other 
cities. This league drew up a sort of manifesto of the 
consideration sought for women and girls in the shops 
called " Standard of a Fair House," which required, among 
other things, that seats be supplied the sales-women, and 
"suitable, cleanly, and sanitary retiring-rooms must be 
provided " ; and while there was no black list published, 
the shops conforming received public commendation, and, 
by the process of elimination, the shops refusing the 
league's demands were known and boycotted. 

All of which would seem to indicate that the shop 



i68 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

assistant in New York has *' a place among the angels." 
But the reverse is almost as near the truth as with the 
English shop assistants still under the living-in system. 
Her wages are shamefully low. I believe the ordinary 
sales-woman receives from five to eight dollars a week, 
with seven dollars as an average, and the bundle wrappers 
and cash-girls get from los. to ;^i a week. 

The general statement from a shop will be that wages 
range from four to twenty dollars, according to the position 
occupied and the amount of responsibility assumed ; but 
the £4 represents what a leading cloak model or the head 
millinery sales-woman would receive, and the fact remains 
that mo'-e shop-girls get below eight dollars than above it. 
And unless the girl is living at home, the keeping of body 
and soul together on this in New York City is an almost 
unsolvable problem. 

There are boarding-houses where a furnished room 
may be had for los. a week, but this room is a mere box 
containing an iron bed, combination washstand and dresser, 
and one chair ; no heating apparatus but a burner on the 
gas-jet, upon which the girl may also do her cooking — 
provided the landlady has a cold in her head, or can be 
persuaded into believing that the aroma of cooking 
sausage is merely the result of the application of an over- 
hot curling-iron. 

But, at any rate, the remainder of the poor child's 
salary must be made to cover food, clothes, and car-fares. 
Charitable organizations have established several working- 
girls' homes, but the shop-girls are not happy there. To a 
self-respecting young woman, and above all an American 
young woman, who is working hard to earn her own way 
in the world, the attitude of patronage and the feeling 
that she is being partially supported by charity is intoler- 
able. Then there are endless rules and regulations. The 
assumption that she is by nature immoral is insulting and 
humiliating. 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 169 

These places are cheap, clean, and comfortable, to all 
appearances ; but the American working-girl will endure 
privation rather than the institutional feeling. Something 
of the endless demand for cheap living accommodation for 
working-women was demonstrated by the rush that was 
made for rooms on a ship aged out of commission for 
active service, which two years ago lay at a dock at the 
foot of a New York business street, and through some 
philanthropist's zeal, the state-rooms were then opened to 
self-supporting girls. Here every girl who had a room 
was supposed to be self-respecting. No watcher was kept, 
no iron-clad rules were made, but every girl was upon her 
honour to conduct herself as she would in her own home. 

The experiment proved a most happy and successful 
one ; but the dock was needed for other vessels, and the 
ship was removed. 

It is frequently intimated that the young and pretty 
shop-girl need not, or is not expected to, live upon her 
salary. The story has been told about many a department 
store — hardly a prominent shop in New York or Chicago 
or Philadelphia or Boston has escaped — that pathetically 
romantic narrative of the beautiful, innocent, and homeless 
girl applying at the department store for employment, and 
being met with the offer of two dollars and a half or three 
dollars a week, a suggestive shrug, concluding with, " You 
have a gentlemen friend, of course ? " And a charity 
worker reports that when, in despair, she asked one of the 
well-known women of the city's disreputable quarters 
what could be done to save the young girls, she received 
the reply : " Raise their wages." 

There is, of course, always that pitiful connexion 
between starvation wages and the demoralization of girls ; 
but there is also the hard fact to face that it is not the 
girl on the lowest wages, but the young woman farther up 
the scale, where vanity can be only half gratified, who 
proves the moral weakling. And, considering the large 



I/O HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

number of girls at work in every large American city as 
shop assistants, an excellent grade of morality is main- 
tained. In one instance a manager, acting upon these 
current insinuations, chose at hap-hazard a group of girls 
employed in his shop, and had their lives investigated and 
their goings and comings shadowed for a period, with the 
result that, out of 150, just two girls were found to be 
leading lives, as he put it, " slightly on the diagonal,'* but 
the offences were indiscretion, not criminality. I have 
wondered whether an investigation of any equally large 
group of girls taken from other walks of life could yield a 
better proportion. 

The shop-girl's life, even in free-and-easy and wealthy 
America, runs in a horribly pinched, exhausting groove to 
make any one with a scrap of sentiment regarding young 
womanhood groan in spirit. 

A knowledge of what goes on in one of those hall 
bedrooms — the after-hour existence of patching up cheap 
worn finery so dear to the girl heart ; the beating of 
numbed fingers to make holding the needle possible ; 
cowering the night through with the clothes worn in the 
day-time piled on the scanty bed covering ; or, in the heat 
of an American city summer, lying gasping across the 
same narrow bed, waiting for the scorching day to follow 
the sweltering night — this makes one look with over- 
whelming pity and not annoyance upon the pert con- 
descension, the exaggerated coiffetcr, and the inattention of 
the American shop-girl as she is remarked by all foreigners. 
That she can forget that hall bedroom, with its wash-bowl 
laundry and its gas-jet cooking, and rise to imagining 
herself the heroine of the romance she tells to her shop 
associates while the customer waits, is the wonder that 
generally — not always — burns the impatience from my 
heart. And as no good American is without belief in a 
home-grown Utopia, I have faith that, in time, we will pay 
our shop assistants better, and perhaps — Utopia of Utopias ! 



SHOPS AND THE SHOPPERS 171 

— evolve a class of young womenhood at work who will 
instinctively serve a customer promptly and to the best of 
the resources she dispenses and not become perpetually 
immersed in the role of a Vere de Vere. 

Still, even in England, the realm, generally speaking, of 
flawless service, the supercilious sales-lady does occasionally 
appear. I have never beheld anything in America that 
equalled the grand manner of the " leading lady " in an 
exclusive cloak and suit house in London. 

I had entered with a friend who had joined me from 
Paris, and who logically stated her desire to get a rain- 
coat in London, because it rained more there, and " they 
naturally would be of better cut." We stated our modest 
mission, and the pompous floor-walker called " Miss Jane," 
and there swam toward us a vision in a black silk princess 
gown, toward the equal in fit of which I hopelessly held 
any fluttering ambition back. Miss Jane merely fluttered 
her eyelids as we pleaded our cause, and then swam away 
to return with a stereotyped rain-coat. She condescended 
to state the price as six guineas. 

"But they have them across the street for four 
guineas," began my tactless friend. 

" Ah, yes, at Blanks ! " softly and contemptuously con- 
ceded Miss Jane. "But then nobody buys there, you 
know. You will notice the lines," she was purring 
haughtily on ; but my friend simply would not know her 
place. 

"If you will watch, you will see people going in and 
out of Blank's all day, and I can assure you that they are 
not doing it for exercise, but for the purpose of buying," 
she snapped, in what I have no doubt she considered 
biting sarcasm. 

But Miss Jane's eyelids fluttered wearily. She smiled 
pityingly— 

" I see," she sighed, " of course if one wishes to be 
unsmart I " and she stroked the garment in question as if 



1/2 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

it were the only thing in the landscape not too atomic to 
notice. 

And my friend bought the six-guinea coat. Perhaps 
the " Miss Janes " on both sides of the water are a distinct 
asset to the shops. Perhaps '* the fault is with ourselves," 
not with our stores — with the shoppers, instead of with 
the shops. At any rate, I have always contended that we 
Americans, at least, like to be impressed in our shopping 
by the exciting bargain element if possible ; but, if not, by 
superiority in the server. And the fact remains that, as 
a nation, we are devoted to shopping. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 

THE present British ambassador to the United States 
takes solitary walks out beyond Washington's out- 
skirts every afternoon, and Washington society, 
from automobile and victoria, glimpse the return of his 
spare, often mud-flecked figure, somewhat askance. The 
ambassador is a man great enough to preclude spoken 
criticism ; but the American mind is mildly puzzled over 
this purposeless stroll, when a game of cards, a venture in 
Wall Street, even a feasting, or a dash in a motor-car, or 
behind a record trotter on the Speedway, might be sub- 
stituted for play. 

If the American man discovers that he is putting on 
flesh too fast, and the physician prescribes systematic daily 
exercise in walking, he either disregards the advice as 
preposterous, or he does it in the grim spirit in which he 
would snatch the time to gargle his throat, were that 
treatment imperative. 

That more people in America know how to work than 
know how to play seems a national defect. Moreover, 
we may or may not take our pleasures sadly, as is the 
customary charge of one nation against another, but we 
certainly take them strenuously. Action is the essence 
of American play. We Americans, after the day's work 
is done, take our rest in further action, our relaxation in 
excitement. Mere idleness, the cessation of work alone, 

173 



174 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

opens up for the European, who has eyes to see and a 
mind to dream, a playground of infinite variety, and the 
apparently heavy and prosaic Teuton, sitting in his home 
or on the park bench, with his children crawling over him 
puppy-like, sitting down to his afternoon beer doing 
absolutely nothing, is playing in finding quiescent amuse- 
ment in his imagination. 

The Englishman is playing when he is strolling off 
alone for a daily constitutional, or sitting in his scrap 
of a garden, watching a bumble-bee blunder in and out 
of the flowers, or punting lazily on the river Sunday 
afternoons. But there is a general feeling with the masses 
in America that it is somehow feeble and unmanly to 
avail one's self of any such rehabilitation. American 
men and women take rest or purposeless exercise as a 
necessity, not as play. There is a general failure to 
perceive that there may be a very satisfactory return in 
the exercise of observation, in the practice of imagination, 
when we are not "done out," and relaxed from fatigue. 
Instead, we want sensational moments, in our work or in 
our diversions. We want what Miinsterburg has called 
a continual " optical captivation of the senses," or we are 
not amused. It would not be possible to convince an 
American that a man pottering about plants in his garden 
is playing more profitably than the admired pitcher on a 
local base-ball nine who strikes out three men in an 
inning. 

Amusement that requires merely the automatic effort 
of the senses is not play to an American. It must be 
something elaborate, and set apart from the rest of life, 
and is labelled "play," and almost always it must be 
something for which he has to pay. 

Play is not a soul-expanding process in America. The 
mental attitude towards play is that it must excite some 
of the senses or it is not play, so it comes that the theatre 
is the chief diversion for all classes in America. 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 175 

Other nations give themselves up readily to playing 
the minute they cease the actual process of work. Stroll- 
ing, clinging to a strap in a crowded car or to an omnibus 
seat, talking to one's neighbour at a cafe table, or on a 
stool at a lunch counter — about all this there is an attitude 
of relaxation in other countries for those who perform the 
somnolent, mechanical labour of office and shop work, 
listlessly well. But not so in America. The same class 
in America has had the spirit of play suppressed before it 
became articulate by the seriousness with which the 
necessity of hustle and enterprise has been impressed. 
Diversions are an artificial mental seasoning. The 
American man thinks v/ork until it is crowded out of 
his mind by something more exciting. 

Work is the natural outlet for mind and body in 
America. The families who spend all day Sundays 
stretched on the grass in our parks ruminating are almost 
all foreigners born, or of still fresh alien lineage. 

Americans emphasize that on work one's very being 
depends, which is all well and good ; but only a few 
seem to understand that on play depends their well-being, 
and that is not good. As a nation, it may save us from 
the flippancy of middle age one finds abroad, but it means 
that we never get beyond the seriousness of our youth, 
into a rounded genial grasp on life. It is not a case of 
all work and no play, as our foreign critics often picture 
us, but of much work and the reaction of play of a high 
pitched, hysterical nature. 

There is no spirit of playtime in the nation's blood 
either to produce or appreciate such precious nonsense 
as that of Edward Lear. Our humour must be a roar, 
or we do not hear it. Our spirits are absorbed in work, 
and we do not go to play by easy stages. It takes a 
farce to coax us to take the jump. 

As a nation we are devoted to sports and games ; 
that is, we train our athletes marvellously well, but always 



176 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

along lines of strenuous specialization, and we throng to 
sit on benches and scream ourselves hoarse over base- 
ball played by professional players who are paid as much 
for giving us for a few months the glow of vicarious 
athletes as a successful professional man will make in a 
year. 

But in America the real spirit of play — " that art," as 
some one has said, "of which games, even at their best, 
are only a crude and imperfect expression " — is unknown. 
This spirit of play we call " day-dreaming,'* or " thoughts 
wool-gathering/' and day-dreaming is deplored as leaving 
a mind untrained, if not diseased. This frees us from 
such picturesque dawdlers and dreamers as one sees 
in the cafes in Paris and about the German universities. 
But also we have as yet produced no Millais nor a Schiller. 
" Art is," as Zola once expressed it, " a corner of life seen 
through a temperament," but success and respectability 
are the natural enemies of temperament, and both are 
broadcast in America. 

" I wish," said a physician, '* that we Americans could 
realize that some men by birth and temperament are fit 
only for dreams ; some, by circumstances, fit only for action ; 
but that many more are normally composed, and in these 
the capacity for each exercise might, if it were permitted, 
serve to offset and refresh the other." At the suggestion 
that such a normal point of view might curtail the work of 
his profession, he added : " Yes. About three-fourths of 
my patients are people who have shipwrecked because 
they never learned to let body and mind play normally." 

Still, one reason why the lack of normal recreation does 
not more seriously affect the health of the general run of 
men in this country is that work itself is a source of 
indulgence, not a penance. '* Americans like to work, and 
because they have been well trained in methods of work 
they get perhaps more enjoyment than any other people, 
except the Japanese, out of the periods of play that work 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 177 

itself affords. In work requiring mental initiative or 
action there are sure to be times of pure delight to the 
American business man." 

This springs partly from the consciousness of success 
in solving the problems on which one is engaged — and in 
America one has great opportunities with enough unsolved 
problems to go around — partly from the fact that here, 
along utilitarian lines, the American imagination awakes 
to action. Moreover, as has been pointed out by an 
American, "the attitude of genial congratulation and 
special affection which, in moments of successful work, 
one assumes toward one's self, holds a histrionic quality 
akin to play." 

Whatever the paucity of self-resource for diversion in 
America, however, the mechanism for amusement according 
to our ideal is here in abundance. 

Take Madison Square Garden in the heart of New 

York City. England has her Crystal Palace, Olympia, 

and Wonderland, while Athens has her famous Stadium, 

and other nations can show places where great crowds 

gather to see certain kinds of sports and pastimes ; but in 

her most famous sporting arena — the " Garden " — America 

has a building in which thousands have gathered, attracted 

by magnets involving the world's most noteworthy 

I performances, "both men and beasts." Beginning as 

merely a big, low-roofed amphitheatre, many and sensa- 

I tional were the contests held there in which speed, stamina, 

j skill, and science predominated — from international walk- 

j ing matches to professional glove fights, that particular 

form of gentlemanly sport in which America puts more 

money and interest than any other nation ; and when the 

modern building of the new Madison Square Garden was 

[constructed on the same site in 1890, the old amphitheatre 

plan was retained as the basis of its massive height ending 

in the slender figure of a gold Diana poised on one foot at 

the top of its spired tower. 



178 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

In the present "Garden" such things have been offered as 
attractions as prize fights, six-day bicycle races, wrestling 
matches, fencing, broadsword combats, tugs-of-war, base- 
ball and inter-collegiate football games, horse shows, dog 
shows, cat shows, sportsman's shows, canoe races, swimming 
races, rifle shooting, pistol shooting, fly casting, automobile 
shows, cycle shows, female bicycle races, horse versus 
bicycle and horse versus man races, athletic games, short 
and long distance running matches, hippodrome chariot 
races, horse races, amateur boxing championships, poultry 
shows, motor-boat shows, live stock exhibitions, Gaelic 
football games, bicycle polo games, roller-skating races, 
lacrosse, billiard championships, and numerous benefits 
at which all the famous pugilists, wrestlers, and athletes 
have appeared. In fact, there isn't a branch of sport, 
either professional or amateur, except yachting and 
automobile racing, that has not been seen, either on a 
large or a small scale. 

The "Garden" — no New Yorker knows it by any other 
name — is said to be the most New Yorkish thing in that 
city. It is a compendium of the city's life in one volume. 
What London would be without St. Paul's, or Paris 
without the "Arc de Triumphe," said some one, "that 
is what New York would be without Madison Square 
Garden." 

The gilded " Diana," a tip-toe on top of it, is 365 
feet above the ground. The amphitheatre is 300 feet 
long, 200 feet broad, and 8 feet high, and it seats 6000 
people, and is lighted by 1000 incandescent lights. Besides 
the large amphitheatre, the building contains a large 
theatre where companies play all season and then there is 
a smaller hall where concerts are given. Incidentally, I 
understand that it cost ;^6oo,ooo and that it has never 
paid expenses, though its rental is ;^200 a night, and 
it receives ;^iooo daily guarantee for six days each 
fall, when the horse show fills a golden, glorious week. 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 179 

The humorist annually makes game of the horse show 

because the people themselves are the show and the horses 

only an excuse. A social function and a fashion bazaar 

it surely is, with its circle of boxes in the garden filled 

with women dressed for the opera ; and the corridors of 

the large hotels, too, are a genuine part of the horse 

show, packed with out-of-town guests, who have come to 

see the people in town parade their horse-show frocks 

there for dinner or supper. But it was undoubtedly the 

" Garden," though the medium of the horse shows, which 

first gave the New York public a chance to learn what 

real saddle and carriage horses were like, how they should 

be ridden and driven, and the sort of equipages that real 

society should use on state occasions. And though the 

! occasion may represent merely a style show to the outside, 

I New York's best sportsmen are interested in it, and the 

I exhibits each year grow more and more wonderful — the 

I parade of pedigreed horse-flesh as well as of pedigreed 

\ society. 

I And it is not only the society lights of New York who 

revel in the horse-show week. Every true New Yorker 

tries to get to the horse show, and round and round 

the " Garden " arena moves this pedestrian throng, jostling 

1 and being jostled, never looking at the quadruped in the 

I ring, but frankly staring at the occupants of the boxes. 

Before a group of society people of more than usual note 

] often there gathers a little knot of curious ones who have 

halted to inspect these personages of whom they have read 

either good or ill in the newspapers. 

One catches bits of conversation. Sometimes it is the 
male, and somewhat " horsey," comment on the good points 
of the women. " See that wonder in red ! Isn't she the 
prize filly, though ? '* " And watch the beauty with the 
blue feather whinney and neigh to that old Methuselah." 
Or the feminine observers ask each other, " Isn't that 
Mrs. Struggle-up ? " " Oh, no ; that is Miss Violet Van 



i8o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Vanderpbve." And everybody feels as relieved as if an 
international treaty had been settled, and they move on, 
only to halt again before the box where a society leader 
has invited a prominent actor. America is warming up to 
the fact that actors and actresses are, many of them, 
interesting men and women, and socially eligible ; but the 
process is slow, and the crowd still stands gaping at an 
actor in a horse-show box, as though it would say with 
some awe and much curiosity : " Why, there's an actor ! " 

The occupants of the boxes pretend not to see that 
they are the subjects of inspection. Some of them succeed, 
but the rest must enjoy fidgeting, for they all appear the 
next night in yet more striking frocks, prepared to be 
stared at again. It is all charmingly vulgar and immensely 
amusing. 

About the only type of exhibition which does not take 
at the ** Garden " is the ** gentleman farmer show." It has 
been attempted several times, and flowers, shrubs, cattle, 
sheep-shearing, dairy-maids, and other rustic attractions 
are offered, but the public do not take to this sort of affair. 
We are not a rural people instinctively, and the pastoral 
makes no appeal as a sphere for livelihood or for play. 

But the sportsman's show is always a success. For 
this event the building becomes a great landscape, with all 
manner of wild places condensed into one medley. One 
year one end of the arena was a range of mountains with 
real trees and real streams of real water. The water turned 
two old-fashioned wheels, and then cascaded into a big lake 
in the centre. One end of the lake was thick with all 
manner of water-fowl, and in another part was a fish- 
hatchery, where trout went to school from the time of their 
birth to the day of readiness for a frying-pan diploma. 

The famous six-days' bicycle race takes place annually 
in the "Garden," and all night long the benches are 
crowded with enthusiasts watching the jaded riders pump- 
ing away on their pedals. At first these gruelling affairs 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY i8i 

permitted one man to ride night and day for 142 hours, 
and the yellow journalists pictured them as going mad with 
fatigue ; but legislation finally put an end to that practice, 
and team races were inaugurated. 

Law also has barred professional pugilism from the 
" Garden " in recent years, so that these ghastly and 
savage contests are now surreptitiously executed in 
suburban fastnesses or in Western States of less stringent 
regulation. That they are maintained with undiminished 
popularity and betting and attendance, is a commentary 
not more on the national idea of sport than on the national 
penchant for the individual in play as well as in everything 
else. It is always the " star " in our theatres, always the 
individual in athletic competition ; the supporting company 
and the team work are always of secondary interest to the 
audience. 

But back to Hecuba ! The " Garden " does, however, 
still entertain every other form of athletes. Over a clay 
\ track, and on a floor covered with that material, all of this 
nation's great athletes have displayed their speed and skill, 
and several sensational international athletic meetings have 
been held in the famous arena, with the recent Dorando- 
Hayes Marathon race a fitting climax. 

And what a memory of versatile Madison Square 
Garden one who has been a child in New York has ! You 
1 were taken there to the dog show, where you were 
deliciously frightened by a thousand dogs leaping and 
tugging at their chains ; you went then to the cat show, 
and to see the poultry show, where " the game-cocks and 
the feather-weight bantams challenge one another to 
mortal combat all day long in safety." 

Then every year the ring-masters of the " Greatest Show 
on Earth " crack their whips in the tan-bark circles under 
the " Garden's " roof, and the shelving sides of the great 
building are banked with children, young and old ; for the 
circus in America takes the place of the Christmas 

\ 



i82 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

pantomime in its perennial appeal to the youngster in 
us all. 

The " New Garden " includes, too, a famous roof-garden 
where the most extravagant and spectacular summer shows 
in the world are produced, and where real-life tragedy took 
a hand and made it the scene of the fatal shooting of the 
architect of this home of sport and pleasure. 

Just as it stands out in the mind of pleasure-hunting 
New Yorkers, so the " Garden " tower, with its glittering, 
airy apex, is a mark for the foreigner's eye in the silhouette 
of the city. An Englishman gives an impression alistic 
view of it. 

" There is one picture I shall never forget," he says. 
" It was at twilight, and the water was red and gold from 
the wonderful sunset reflection. The tall buildings and 
the angular outlines were beginning to be softened into 
blurred edges. Everywhere was the effect of ghosts of 
colour taking leave of a world of shadows. 

" As the ferry-boat veered a little, first to one side and 
then the other, you saw vignettes of buildings, and once, 
just for a moment, I caught the view of the Madison Square 
Garden tower, with its beautiful Diana. Venice never 
offered a more satisfying, exquisite picture than that in 
colour and form. Suddenly it was blotted out, but I was 
grateful for the moment. It was one of those impressions 
that you feel are life-long, and that you will recall perhaps 
years after at a chance word, or at the suggestion of similar 
effects perhaps a whole world apart." 

And one of our critics, commenting upon our futile 
hypocrisy in labelling " From Paris " all the theatrical 
attractions of a bold, brazen, or extra-salacious character, 
sees in the " Garden's " Diana a sinister symbol. 

" Paris is a wicked city, but New York is presided over 
by a golden woman who veers as a vane. The man who 
put her there said she was Diana the Chaste, typical of 
New York. In time, they came to call the roof beneath 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 183 

her tower * Paris by Night/ and there she saw the man who 
had put her up as Diana lying slain beneath her because 
of a dancer. And she knew it was not * Paris by Night,' 
but the ' Heart of New York * ; and she knew she was 
not gold, but brazen ; and she knew she was not Diana, 
but Phryne — stark naked." 

But to emerge from symbolism to fact. Every city in 
the United States has a big roofed arena, after the pattern of 
the Madison Square Garden. In Chicago and St. Louis 
these great halls swing from horse-show head-quarters to 
auditorium for political conventions, for presidential 
nominations, with all the ease of " a bed by night, a chest 
of drawers by day." Denver's enormous auditorium, in 
which the Democratic National Convention of 1908 was 
held, has now a municipal theatre with a seating capacity 
of 3000 within its ample walls, and fairs and automobile 
shows alternate in this big steel and cement structure, 
with band concerts and campaign rallies, quite after the 
manner of its prototype, " The Garden." 

Somewhere in the books of Horace is recorded a 
criticism, where it is said that the Romans did not find 
much pleasure in going to hear fine plays, a beautiful 
oration or exquisite verse, preferring always to see a great 
spectacle, or, as we would describe it to-day, to see the 
" big show." 

Americans have that, at least, in common with the 
Romans. If you want to see a typical American audience, 
go to one of these " big shows," running for a season in 
the large cities, and touring the country in an undiminished 
popularity of week stands. Nothing could more eloquently 
demonstrate the helplessness of the ordinary American 
when withdrawn from his business, and confronted with 
the problem of amusing himself, than the vast patronage 
of these physically and mechanically spectacular exhi- 
bitions. For the " big show " with absolutely no plot or 
a weak thread, many degrees less discernible than the 



i84 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

frail story of legitimate light opera, with meretricious 
music and shabby humour, occasionally appears as a 
''summer show" in the Strand theatres in London, but 
here it is the perennial Mecca the year round of all 
middle-class respectability. 

" I don't want to go to the theatre to think ; I want 
to be amused. The big show for mine ! " is a stock 
remark among our men, who otherwise go plodding along 
with their noses close to the grindstone of practical affairs. 

So while the problem play attracts smart audiences in 
the cities, who go, many of them, be it said, in that Puritan 
spirit of unconscious hypocrisy, that they may later soar to 
the summit of all righteousness in denouncing what they 
have really enjoyed ; while the rural play and the dis- 
tinctly American play of heart interest seldom give 
managers uneasiness as to a permanent clientele ; while 
frank .melodrama of the *' Edna, the Pretty Type-writer, 
or Death before Dishonour " type, forever hold that part of 
the city and the country where emotions are untarnished 
of conventions, and the craving for romance untrammelled 
by sordid intrusion of fact ; still the " big shows," with 
their thousands of flexible dancing-girls with shrill voices 
and exquisite figures, thousands of capering effeminate 
young men, their wonderful effects of scenery and light, 
their clumsy feeble buffoonery of the inevitable broad 
comedy parts — these are the preferred theatre attractions 
with the mass of American people. 

The audiences are not fashionable, but with every 
evidence of material success, and, strange to say, with a 
fair proportion of men. 

These " big-show " devotees do not correspond to the 
middle class abroad, because the class that would there 
correspond to them socially, would be of a thriftiness and 
frugality, or too much in accord with artistic aspirations 
towards good music, to squander their money on specta- 
cular nonsense, while the comparatively sporadic cases 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 185 

of middle-class wealth abroad would be struggling to 

imitate the aristocrats, and shunning the bourgeoisie in 

entertainment. But here in America we have the great 

representative class of wealthy bourgeoisie — the natural 

outcome of the tremendous prosperity of a new nation — 

and to them the spectacular display of coloured lights and 

; cheap music and gorgeous costumes strike a true and 

' congruous note of entertainment, with the all-night 

restaurant and underground grill-room as a climax to 

! their respectable dissipation. 

They are dressed like rich people who are anxious that 
' every one should know they are rich. Yet there is a 
I certain air of earnestness about them, even as pleasure 
] seekers, which turns the edge of vulgarity as applied to 
I them. They are earnestly seeking, as only an American 
', can, to be unthinkingly and ostentatiously amused. Cheer- 
I fulness, or rather the pursuit of cheerfulness, that is perhaps 
] slightly exaggerated to counteract the native sombreness 
( of a toil-like existence, being a particular feature of 
; American pleasure. 

I A foreigner entering any one of these after-theatre 
I cafds and grill-rooms for the first time, might suppose 
j from the free-and-easy attitudes they assume that the 
women were declasse ; but there is no ground for this 
when we quite understand that effort at gaiety in 
I America is universal. 

1 One foreigner, however, on taking observation in a 
certain crowded grill-room in one of our large cities, 
subtly fathomed the innocence of our smart bourgeoisie. 
He said : 

" They have all the appearance of what we might call 
the gay rich ; not the aristocrats, however. In Europe, 
rich people do not care for ostentation, and they do not 
spend much money in restaurants. This place is another 
evidence of American optimism and greed for pleasure, 
and more money than they know what to do with. In 



i86 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Europe, we should not care to be crowded together for 
supper underground. 

"Although there aregrill-rooms underground in Europe, 
they are not very popular yet. I should judge, from the 
appearance of these people, that they belong to middle- 
class lawyers, doctors, merchants, and so on. In Europe, 
you don't find the middle class in a midnight restaurant. 
They demand more of their hours of relaxation than 
those who have evidently money to squander at will ; but 
among this class they would be pleasure seekers in a 
normal way in the daytime." 

America is at heart so moral and so terribly business- 
like that there is no effort made to avoid the distinction of 
appearance between the moral and the immoral in pleasure 
seeking. The American middle-class woman who has 
attended a performance of a " big show " with her husband 
is so steeped in domesticity and vanity that she wears her 
glaring finery and exaggerated millinery with a bravado 
that courts misconstruing glances. 

And there is an air of provincial gaiety about our 
other resorts of forced respectability and mingled wanton- 
ness when we try to ape the Moulin Rouge or the Folies 
B^rgere. The attempted replicas of these in every large 
American city have nothing gay or excusable about them, 
and are so crude as to shock the foreigner from nations 
who adorn their motives, of whatever degree of baseness, 
with some subtlety of outward grace. 

But just as aimless excitement and cheap sensationalism 
in amusement is sought by our unlimited middle class as a 
natural outlet for a people in whose serious natures the 
impulse to play does not lie, so in the crudity and dullness 
of all risque attractions in our cities lies the tempera- 
mental bias that withholds from us that certain quality of 
intelligent imagination outwardly expressed that is a 
necessity for the European, no matter what form of 
pleasure he is seeking. It all comes back to the fact that 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 187 

we are too 'moral and too ingenuous to attain an artistic 
gloss, be it of art or vice. 

During the summer months the " big show," no less 
spectacular, no less elaborate of mechanical wizardry or 
caste and costume, is transferred to our roof-garden 
theatres, or to the theatres which supplement the attrac- 
tions at our more famed seashore resorts, and an English- 
man has remarked in regard to this feature of our 
amusement : 

" The French shows are a bubble of champagne and a 
wink. The German biergartens are a stein and a roar. 
The English music-halls are tuppeny ale and chuckles. 
But the New York roof-garden musical performance 
twinkles and roars and chuckles and laughs from start to 
finish — with any and all the drinks you want." 

This is amusement par excellence in America. 

Of course we have our vaudeville (pronounced 
"vodeveal"), and the attractions presented at "polite 
vaudeville " houses are fearfully and wonderfully com- 
pounded of Parisian cafe charmante features, Hagenbeck 
specialities, and cross sections of pantomime play with 
tabloid drama or operetta — "animals and danger and 
women," as Professor Ferrero has succinctly described the 
Roman spectacles. 

Vaudeville is censored as no other amusement field in 
America. It is considered essentially the people's and the 
family theatre. It is said that " any young girl can take 
her mother there with perfect propriety." 

The management urges that any line or feature offen- 
sive to the most scrupulous shall be reported to them for 
instant elimination. And this is not the empty courtesy 
of the photographer who insists that you shall " pose until 
perfectly satisfied," and then jerks your head and twitches 
your draperies vengefully if you present yourself for a 
second sitting. On the contrary, I know of several 
instances where a vaudeville act has been cheerfully 



i88 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

expurgated or even removed on the objection offered by 
a single person in the audience. 

A French ballad-singer, after a tour of this country, has 
announced her disappointment in our "gross public," who 
enjoy negro minstrels much more than they did her quaint 
songs of the eighteenth century. That a clever artist, as 
she surely was, very subtle, full of ironical shadings, full 
of low-toned almost imperceptible meaning, delicate, 
civilized in the most ultra-French way, should go over 
and beyond the head of most good American citizens was 
inevitable. She was at once too small to hit hard the 
human heart of things in the American public. 
f But, on the other hand, it is no disgrace to the public 
to like negro minstrels. It would, on the contrary, be a 
disgrace, or rather a limitation, for the American public 
not to feel the genuine comedy quality, the whimsical 
pathos of the humour of the negro histrion, and to cultivate 
and imitate it as an asset in our national amusements. 
Perhaps the most native and spontaneous, certainly one 
of the most delicious qualities that we have in expression 
in America, is the negro quality in temperament, song, 
droll comedy, amusing psychology, and inspiring good 
humour. 

Of course there are many spurious negro minstrel 
shows on the American stage ; shows where burnt-cork 
make-up is made to cover atrocities against taste and 
histrionic ability ; but a real " minstrel show," be the actors 
genuine Ethiops, or clever imitators, with their plantation 
songs, their wonderful "wing and buck" and "cake-walk" 
dances, and the charm of the " coon " humour of antic 
and dialect — it is no disgrace for the American public to 
respond to that. And it does. And the packed audiences 
are curiously middle-aged and sedate, with groups of old 
men who applaud and whistle the refrains with all the 
abandon of young " gallery gods."J 

Light opera has to be very light indeed to attain wide 



1 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 189 

popularity in the United States, and a splendour of 
staging or spiciness of libretto must compensate for the 
presence of either plot or complicated score, or it does 
not go at ail. We call it " comic opera " and " musical 
comedy," and cut the pattern to verge as close as possible 
to the voluminous specialities of the "big show," before 
we find it fully acceptable. 

As for grand opera there is a growing appreciation, 
due to the infusion of music-loving, understanding blood ; 
but to the majority of Americans, music, in its deeper 
expression, is a closed book. 

New York is gaining the name of being the centre of 
music-loving people. To her across the ocean come the 
best artists of all nations. And yet I really believe, in the 
last analysis, grand opera means about as much as a new 
style or a course in beauty treatment to the average New 
Yorker. In the highest-priced seats of the biggest opera 
house scores of women sit, not listening but posing or 
preening. Whatever expression there is in their faces 
speaks of self-satisfaction and self-appreciation and absolute 
security that they are doing a smart thing properly. If 
they have any doubt, they have only to cast their eyes to 
the boxes, and in the jewel-laden, stiffly-posed patrons-in- 
chief of the grand opera movement in America, have the 
woodenness of their posing confirmed. An Englishman 
said of the Metropolitan Opera House — 

" I am convinced that there cannot be in all the world, 
within a given space, so much stiffness, posing, and attempt 
at posing as is noticeable in the otherwise delightful opera 
house. In other opera houses, American and European, 
one hears too much chattering, observes too much anima- 
tion, and wishes one's neighbour would keep quiet about 
the * story of the opera.' But in the orchestra and boxes 
of the Metropolitan it is a relief to hear a natural remark 
such as I heard the other night toward the end of ' La 
Traviata.' Said a young woman behind me concerning 



190 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Sembrich as the dying Violetta, ' Well, she certainly is a 
good dier ! ' " 

Covent Garden Opera House, so near the renowned 
market ** where they sell at wholesale and retail Brussels 
sprouts and turnip tops," and with its cold British audiences 
has yet an air of properly housing and welcoming the 
wonderful music. The English may not be easily moved, 
but they know a great moment, even when it may not be 
in the star's role, and they applaud discriminatingly. The 
New Yorker at grand opera has an air of commercial 
appreciation which says : " We are hearing the most 
expensive artists in the world, and we are quite willing to 
applaud when the great artists appear and we are sure we 
are getting our money's worth." And we are so solemn 
about it ! Going to grand opera is a rite, not a festivity. 
In comparison with the temperamental passion of an opera 
audience in Berlin we look, as some one has said, *4ike a 
grand jury going to dinner." 

A witty observer puts it : " The Englishwoman trailing 
her lace gown over the walk along the * Row ' for effect in 
vanity on parade, and the Paris woman in the Bois de 
Boulogne holding hers up for effect, present a deliciously 
funny phase of national posing ; but for posing in the stiffest 
and most unnatural ways the prize must go to occupants 
of the boxes and orchestra chairs at grand opera in 
America." 

If animation and vivacity are leading characteristics of 
American women, then it would seem as if one did not see 
typical American women at the opera. Perhaps they sit 
in the balcony and gallery ; but the casual observer will 
never find any softened, " carried away," or fiery apprecia- 
tive expression at opera in America. 

The next morning he will find a few lines reviewing 
the work of the leading artists who appeared in the piece, and 
three columns of descriptive work on the costumes of 
" society leaders and others." 



THE PEOPLE AT PLAY 191 

The foreign grand opera stars of late years have given 
performances in Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and 
Washington ; but it is only New York that has a sustained 
regular " season " of opera. And all efforts to tour the 
country with secondary opera stars and companies have 
met with disaster. We are not sure enough of our actual 
ability to risk being deceived ; and with no hungering for 
heavy music anyway, we refuse to consider as seriously 
diverting any but the highest priced. 

Who shall say we are not discriminating in our art in 
America ? 



CHAPTER IX 
LIFE AT WASHINGTON 

AMERICAN cities have each their pet boast. San 
Francisco used to shout confidentially of its wicked- 
ness, like a callow youth trying to impress a stranger 
as a man-of-the-world ; whoever meets a Chicagoan 
endures a review of its "most wonderful stories in the 
world " ; the pride of a Bostonian in belonging to the 
nobility of Massachusetts and in being cultured is without 
limit ; New York is really smiling smugly, for all its yellow 
press exposures, over the " smartness " and antics of its 
millionaire society ; Philadelphia talks '' old families " and 
*' first families," until you wonder whether Willian Penn 
wasn't another name for Adam, 'and the town he founded 
the original Garden of Eden ; but the only city with a 
feature of national vaunting is Washington. 

The cosmopolitan flavour of Washington society and 
the impressiveness of official hospitality at the national 
capital is a subject of awed pride from one end of the 
continent to the other. Every farmer and every school 
teacher has as an ambition — the saving of enough money 
to take a trip to Washington and " see how they do it " 
there. It is almost a case of see Rome and die. 

But Washington is really like one of those reversible 
dolls, the freak of the nursery — a flirt of the skirts, a 
general topsy-turvy of her dollship, and a different head 
and costume stand demurely forth. 

192 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 193 

In the winter Washington is a city of society and 
politics, and, prcsterea nihil, for the rest of the year it takes 
on the air of a cross between a deserted village and a 
rather sleepy Southern town. 

In the winter season Washington has quite the air of a 
European capital. There is the great cardboard exchange 
, of the Diplomatic Corps and officials circles that fills the 
I streets day after day with every sort of smart calling 
conveyance ; from two or three houses in every part of the 
fashionable quarter an awning stretched from curb to 
entrance announces a more formal reception in progress ; 
. the millionaire colony give one lavish entertainment after 
I another. In the mornings the tide of brougham and motor- 
( car turns to the Capitol when any exciting phase of legisla- 
' tion is promised, and the reserved sections of the diplomatic 
I and senatorial galleries are as packed on these occasions as 
( the great public galleries, where white and black citizenship 
I illustrate nobly the XVth amendment of our Constitution ; 
\ the White House glows with functions of more or less 
I formality almost every night ; the theatres call their crowds 
in the early part of the night ; and the hotel supper-room 
bridges the festivity over until the next day — Washington 
is doing her, best to make Uncle Sam appear a very gay 
gentleman and host. But as Paris still speaks of royalty 
playing at Republicanism, so Washington society, striving 
for a Continental flavour, betrays funny little lapses into 
democratic crudity. But more of that later. 
J The fact remains that, once the winter season is over, 
j Washington as a city is dead. The official world boards 
up its doors and windows ; the hotels put their furnishings 
in linen overalls and moth balls and do the chandeliers up 
in mosquito-bar. The cosmopolitan atmosphere is drawn 
out as in a forced draught after the "Presidential Special," 
bearing the chief executive out of the Union Station to 
his summer home, and the departing trains filled with 
] diplomats, cabinet officers, senators, and Congressmen and 
o 



194 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

their families, and the Capitol becomes a small town — a 
town more southern than northern in its leisurely tenor of 
life — made up of Government clerks, small shopkeepers, and 
the negroes. It is as different from the winter and official 
Washington as the beaming black face and red bandana 
of one end of the transformation doll, as it is usually made 
in America, is from the white grande dame at the other. 

Of course all national capitals have their light and 
shade of the various quarters and their gay and quiet 
seasons, socially speaking ; but in London and the other 
foreign capitals the main character of the city survives, at 
least to the casual observer, even after society's flight ; the 
business traffic roars on, the hotels buzz and blare with 
tourists, the great shops are filled, and the theatres offer 
spectacular attractions. 

' But the European capitals have grown up gradually 
and naturally. They are not only the seats of government, 
but great cities where commerce, art, and literature have 
long flourished, while our American capital, like our 
Federal Constitution, was " made to order." Washington 
came into existence with the placing of the Capitol and 
Government buildings, and, having been created for the 
special purpose of housing the nation's government, it has 
kept within the circumscribed lines of that mission, and 
the social game with its political background forms the 
business of life in Washington. J 

There are no large commercial interests, the absence of 
trade leaving the streets comparatively free from heavy 
trucks and wagons ; there is practically a dearth of art 
galleries, museums, and musical opportunities. There are 
one or two writers of note living in Washington, but no 
literary coterie worthy the name, so that politics and 
social intercourse — always important in a capital — are 
especially so in Washington, since there is so much less to 
distract than in the great European cities. In a " nation 
of shopkeepers " here we have a city where there is no 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 195 

haste and pressure of a commercial scramble for the daily 
bread. 

It has been called "a city of leisure and authority," 
though perhaps leisure is no more literally applicable than 
the declaration of the wife of a cabinet officer that, after 
living in the political maelstrom in Washington, life in 
any other part of the United States looked like a simple 
problem of " bread-and-butter and love." 

It does present the anomaly of America not engaged 
in making its living or its fortune. Leisure from business 
does exist for the majority who come to Washington for 
the winter season ; but being, as a nation, vastly uneasy, 
with leisure on our hands, we turn all our energy to the 
social conventions and a system of calling, with the result 
' that our social life at the capital is of obvious manufacture, 
exacting as great expenditures of time and strength and 
hustle as a business career elsewhere. In Washington we 
literally make a business of society, and hospitality has a 
commercial flavour instead of the poise and habituated 
I ease of social intercourse in other capitals. For instance, 
all personal visits must be paid in person. The sending of 
cards in place of a call, except in an emergency, is a great 
breach. 

There is, let us hope, no city of the same size in the 

j world in any part where the making of personal calls is 

I carried on such an immense scale. In the splendid 

' courage and vigour of our youth as a nation we are trying 

j to do what people in Europe, and even in our own com- 

\ mercial metropolis, New York, have decided cannot be 

done. We are trying to graft the conventions of society 

upon the literal genuineness of a simple democratic regime, 

and so scorn the form of a phantom call by the proxy of a 

card mailed or delivered without query for the hostess. 

But, as a demonstration of genuineness, these calls of a few 

seconds on a hostess, who couldn't recall your name nor 

recognize you two minutes later, are as farcical as they 



196 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

are exhausting. Think of the social programme of a 
Congressman's wife newly come to Washington. As a 
new-comer — for in Washington the usual social code is 
inverted to make the first call incumbent upon the new- 
comer to the older resident — she must, in the short winter 
season, call upon the wife of every other representative — 
the appointment of the last census makes the number of 
representatives 386 — upon the wives of the senators — the 
full number of the senate is 90, and upon the wives of 
the cabinet officers. The calling upon all ambassadors and 
ministers and at the homes of the justices of the supreme 
court was formerly included in the social campaign of the 
Congressman's wife ; but now, perhaps to a happy dis- 
pensation for both contingents, this is omitted. 

Now the men who go to Washington as representatives 
are fair specimens from the products of the whole country, 
which means, notwithstanding the Continental cry of cor- 
ruption in politics, and excluding the small coteries of 
rich and cultured who have managed to slip into Congress 
despite a general prejudice against them at the local polls, 
that the majority of Congressmen are conscientious, steady- 
going individuals, some of the most provincial-looking 
being men of marked ability, and their wives are often 
their equals, occasionally their superiors, but very generally 
the result of an early marriage and a struggling up 
together. Contrary to the English custom, the election of 
man to the national legislature pronounces his wife, 
regardless of other specifications, an element in the social 
life at the capital. 

The average American woman knows as much about 
politics as she does about Babylonian literature ; but in 
America, with woman never a negligible quantity, she 
must share the life politics brings to her husband and take 
her place in the social life in Washington, even when she 
is in no wise fitted for it, and when the call of the uncom- 
plicated life before " John took to politics " is upon her. 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 197 

A society composed of wives of the members of the 
House of Commons, or of the families of the members of 
the Chamber de Deputes, would develop a strange and 
totally impossible consorting ; but whoever hears of the 
wives of the members of the lower legislative house in 
either capital ? 

The Congressional Circle for the exploitation of the 
wives of representatives is a distinct exponent of our 
republican court, and also expresses the American man's 
estimate of woman as the socially " show-off" member of 
the family. Another curious phase of life at the capital is, 
that while society is not the hand-maiden of politics as in 
England, yet society — even that of the wealthy and our 
foreign guests — is based upon and regulated by the presence 
of Congress. It really is not Lent but the sessions of 
Congress that foreclose the social season. Yet the leaders 
of society are seldom allied to the political circles — it was 
only under President Roosevelt's administration that the 
White House assumed a social arbitership to any degree — 
and the Congressional Circle, numerically the largest in 
Washington's social life, is the one of no formative power 
or prestige, though it is the basis of society. 

There are those who maintain that the Congressman's 
wife is a decidedly passive element in Washington society 
of late, and that the growth of the importance of the 
Diplomatic Corps and the development of a smart set has 
relegated her to a social reservation of her own, even as 
the Indian's liberty is bounded by the government 
reservation ; but while undoubtedly the more exclusive 
entertainments pass her by, Mrs. Congressman and her 
calls form a very important feature on the social land- 
scape. 

Sometimes she is a very humbly born lady, weighted 
into premature age and self-effacement by the overwhelm- 
ing desire to be " a good mother to John's children " — the 
backbone of the country, but not exactly in training for 



198 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

exposure in society. She travels perhaps thousands of 
miles to transport her little brood to Washington, where 
her nebulous conception of politics gives her little idea 
why John has transferred his business. Besides the 
problem of getting a home which will meet the family 
requirements and income, putting the children in schools, 
and engaging servants in the strange city, she has im- 
pressed upon her the all-important function of a Congress- 
man's wife's calls. 

So this new Congressman's wife starts out, her card- 
case in her hand, probably four days in the week, and 
between three and six o'clock she makes a round of calls 
on total strangers, before whom she stands for a second 
after her name has been announced or she has explained 
it and her husband's political affiliations ; she is then 
involuntarily urged forward by the steady stream of other 
callers, and she may or may not linger for a moment or 
two beside the refreshment-table ; but, at all events, within 
ten minutes from entering she is at the outer door again, 
and wishing very much that John had not gone into politics. 

I heard three of these congressional wives, tossed by 
hazard together in a human jam at a Cabinet home, 
reaching out the tendril of friendship. They looked 
extremely uncomfortable, and were not versed in society 
chit-chat, but every syllable spoke of a yearning for the 
home for which Washington was a mocking substitute, in 
such an intensely American and pathetically loyal spirit, 
that I consider it absolutely typical. 

" I'm from Missouri — from Kansas City. Yes, it is a 
pleasant city," a first vouchsafed, on an encouraging smile 
from one of the others. " It has the finest system of bully- 
vards in the world." 

" I reckon it's mighty fine out there in the West," 
concurred a second ; " but I'm from Georgia and the best 
people in the South — we all are the greatest hands to stay 
at home. I declar', it seems so strange to be among 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 199 

strangers. Yes'm, the first families of Georgia are certainly 
the most clannish folks in the world/' she drawled con- 
clusively. 

"Then you've never been in North Dakota, either of 
you, have you } " contributed the third. " We do have the 

most wonderful mud I mean," she added as the others 

started, " for wheat raising, you know. Why, that mud 
out in Dakota'U raise more wheat to the square inch 

than " But the wedge in front of them parted, and, 

recalling duty, they hurried off to the next call. 

The newsboy who takes his daily stand at the door of 
the wing of the Capitol where Congress sits, and bawls, 
" Here you are, gents, all the poipers from your home 
town," has a large patronage from the Congressmen, who 
snatch the home sheet and greedily devour the local 
political news to find whether a rival candidate has arisen, 
and to take the pulse of their constituency that they may 
formulate the Washington course accordingly. But the 
wives of these representatives will have the home papers 
sent to them for the sole purpose of reading the death and 
birth and marriage notices, and sigh over this connecting 
link with the old life from which their husband's political 
career has lifted them. 

The winter season at the capital is a great tax on the 
obscure Congressman's wife. She comes into the glare of 
a social life she has never dreamed of, and that she acquits 
herself as well as she does is remarkable. One sees them 
going about the social round with the cheering subjectivity, 
" If this be society, make the most of it," reflected in 
their faces. And at one of the large receptions at the 
White House a Congressman's wife became so agitated as 
she approached the President and his receiving line that 
she passed through snivelling audibly. But these are the 
inevitable details of a republican court. 

On the other hand, there is a considerable number of 
the women in the so-called " Congressional Circle " to 



200 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

whom the experience outside the family circle is not 
altogether new, and who quickly mould their talents to the 
sinuosities of society at the capital ; women young, strong, 
social in their tastes, and possessed of leisure, to whom this 
visiting on a large scale becomes a business which they 
accomplish with " neatness and dispatch," if not enthusiasm. 
The adaptability of the American woman is nowhere 
better illustrated, since often a woman who would rather 
have gone to the electrical chair than on her first round of 
official calls will evolve, in a few seasons in Washington, 
into a well-turned product of social grace. 

But how a Congressman's wife works out her economic 
salvation must indeed command admiration. The salary 
paid a national representative is ;^I500, and not more than 
a third of the House members have means outside of this. 
There are a few Congressmen who have made money in 
business, and who have a large income on which to live in 
Washington. Then there are, of course, the rising politicians 
who have married fortunes ; but, as a rule, the Congressmen 
are entirely dependent on their salaries. 

To be sure, even that is vastly more than the majority 
have ever earned before, since the United States Congress 
is largely recruited from lawyers of moderate practice, 
doctors, and newspapermen ; but on the government salary 
the old home out in his district must be maintained, even 
when he and his family are in Washington, lest his 
constituents convict him of transferring his allegiance to 
the capital, and cease to give his name a prominent place 
in the papers at the next election ; and while his own 
travelling expenses to and from the congressional sessions 
are covered by a mileage allowance, the railroad fare of 
his family — often a heavy item when the width of the 
continent is between the district he represents and the 
capital where he does his representing — must be paid, and 
there is, above all, the living in Washington and the 
entertaining which his position there necessitates. 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 201 

Of course there are extreme cases of the way a 
Congressman may manage his Washington living. One of 
them, with a small income beyond his government salary 
and a socially ambitious wife, whose idea of being in 
Washington society was to live at a large hotel and trail 
expensive gowns up and down the restaurant corridor, told 
me, laughingly, that he always handed his salary check over 
to the hotel clerk, and asked to be notified of the deficit 
between it and his monthly account. On the other hand, 
it is possible for members of Congress to go through 
their term without letting anybody know where they live. 
They can economize ; they can take small houses in back 
streets ; they need not have reception days ; and they can 
live as quietly as they do at home. Tradition even tells 
of a Congressman and his wife who boarded in an obscure 

I part of the city, and succeeded in living within the ;^240 
allowance for clerk hire which is a congressional perquisite, 
and saved his entire salary for the years of his public 

\ service. But, as a rule, a Congressman wants to live in style 
befitting the dignity of his office, as he conceives it to be, 
and this problem of living is a hard one for the average 
Congressman's wife. The cost of everything in Washington 
is inflated, because of the emergency demand during the 
congressional season. She finds that a furnished house in 
the desirable part of the town, even if it be of most moderate 
size, rents for £^0 to £^0 a month, and fuel and lighting 
must of course be adided ; the renting and furnishing of an 
empty house can hardly be thought of in view of the 
uncertain tenure of her husband's office — with a term of 
only two years a Congressman must turn from one 
successful election immediately to face the possibility of 
[defeat at the next, for few districts in the United States 
are stable — while an attempt to take a family to live at the 
large hotel is bankruptcy for the Congressman dependent 
on his salary, and apartments of six rooms average ;£"20 a 
month. 



202 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

The cost of maintaining the table for even a small 
family can hardly fall below ;^I5 a month, with the market 
man's eye upon congressional patronage as an easy prey ; 
and with entertaining, not only that demanded by the 
reciprocity of invitations in the Washington circle, but all 
that is expected by the visiting constituents who never do 
fail to look up "our Congressman," this is easily raised to 
;^30. There must be two or three servants when probably 
one had been ample in the home town, or perhaps, if the 
Congressman has come from a district where "help" is 
scarce, or from particularly straitened circumstances, the 
wife has been in the habit of " doing her own work," and 
the Washington outfit of servants will hardly cost less than 
£g a month, even when coloured, for the servant problem 
is demoralized at the capital by the fact that this transient 
political influx will pay almost any price for even inferior 
service, since it is " anything to get through the season." 
Then there is the wife's wardrobe, which seldom fails to be 
an ascending budget as she realizes the social demands of 
her Washington life and sees the other women's frocks. 
The bill for cab-hire to attend dinners and receptions, and 
to help madam through the labyrinth of those official calls, 
mounts up with the discouraging persistency of a taxi- 
meter. The children may be put in public school, but 
more often than not the grades do not coincide with the 
schools " out home," and private tutoring or tuition in a 
private school is added to the family expenses. 

A very cursory survey of these figures would seem to 
mark the Congressman's household for an algebraic state- 
ment of income at the end of a Washington season. But 
such is seldom the case. The wife trains herself to an 
economy and management that is surprising. The 
requirements of their position in Washington make the 
disposition of the family income a problem, whereas before 
it had been a game without rules in her typically American 
household, and the " keeping up appearances " without 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 203 

incurring debt, on the part of the Congressman's wife is 
perhaps to be weighed against the sweeping statement 
of woman's negative position in our politics. 

There has been a recent growth of less expensive 
family hotels as a feature in Washington life to accom- 
modate the congressional families. At one of these there 
were, last season, over seventy guests writing " Honourable " 
before their husband's names. Their wives received their 
callers together, and shared the expense of such afternoon's 
entertainment, and incidentally simplified matters for 
any one making the Washington round of calls. But I 
have often thought these afternoon receptions must be 
rather an astounding sight to the foreigner, who not 
unnaturally expects to find, at the American capital, 
something of the court life he has been accustomed to. 

Entering the hotel on one of these congressional days 
at home, you are conducted without question up to a 
mezzanine balcony above the office floor. Just outside 

i the door of this is a long table, covered with small baskets 
of every description, each tagged with the name of a 
Congressman's wife, and in these you deposit your visiting- 
cards under the surveillance of a terribly serious " buttons." 
Then a coloured announcer takes you in tow, and you find 

' that around the balcony are ranged the seventy hostesses, 
making an almost closed circle about the court. The 
matter of precedence in the receiving-line is based on the 

i congressional husband's length of service in the House. 

an alcove at one end a refreshment-table is placed, 

generally presided over by the daughters in this immense 

congressional family, while it is not an uncommon sight to 

find a " mammie " nurse with her charges viewing the 

\ scene from a doorway or corner, and you may occasionally 
trip over a youngster who, bolder than the rest, has decided 

j to mingle with the guests. At times a father, facetiously 

j and proudly inclined, passes down the line, presenting an 

j infant in arms to the hostesses. All this gives an air of 



In 



1 



204 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

"homey" interior, and denies, somewhat humorously, the 
business-like attempt at social dignity with which your call 
is dispatched. 

The coloured announcer bellows (there is no other 
word) your name at the head of the receiving-line, and you 
are off! After the start, you are passed on by name from 
hostess to hostess, and it is a wise caller who recognizes 
her own name as it is repeated by the last in the circle, for 
it is like the havoc wrought to the whispered words in the 
child's game of " gossip." But you may not stop to explain 
your name or the weather, for the line of callers moves as 
on an esculator, and you must go with it ; on and on, 
until, looking back on the advancing line, and the glimpses 
of the stationary line of congressional hostesses back of it, 
you feel your vision as confused as if you were one of the 
figures in a whirling kaleidoscope of childhood's days. But 
you come away feeling that you have met seventy women 
to whom their part in the Washington social world is a 
serious matter, and who are as conscientiously doing their 
part as the congressional husbands whose eloquence is 
winding its periodic way about the legislative halls in the 
capital. But is there any other capital in the world where 
the political world is given quite this domestic-social turn ? 

The economic quandary of the senator coming to 
Washington would be worse than in the representative's 
family, since the salary is the same, and a great deal more 
is expected of a senator in the way of entertainment and 
liberality because of his higher social ranking ; but, now- 
adays few senators are without a large private income. 
How hard sledding it would otherwise be is illustrated by 
the case of a certain senator, recognized as one of the 
strongest men mentally in the Senate, and yet a poor man 
among his wealthy colleagues. He pays £600 a year for 
a residence in Washington, which is not nearly so com- 
fortable or so elegant as that in which he lives in his small 
home city of the Middle-west. His servants cost ^120 a 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 205 

year. He is compelled to keep a horse and carriage, which 

cost ;^ioo. Last year he paid ;6^8o in chanty. Most of it 

was spent for railroad tickets to send home citizens of his 

own state who were stranded in Washington, and knew 

no other person to whom they could appeal. In the 

first year of a new administration the number of these 

; demands upon senators and representatives is unusually 

large, because of the presence of so many disappointed 

office-seekers. The senator gave ;^ioo as a campaign 

I contribution to the treasury of his party, and his house- 

; hold bills were only just covered by the remaining 

' £SOO of his salary. He was compelled to borrow £$0 to 

I pay his travelling expenses while he was " stumping " his 

' state for the benefit of the Presidential candidate of his 

! party. Some one suggested that a man of his intellect 

< could afford to live less expensively and trust to his real value 

I for prestige ; but the rejoinder to this was to the point and 

I true : " A man may be powerful and learned, but in these 

\ days, when the United States is taking conventionalities 

I and society as a serious matter, a statesman cannot live in 

I a tub like Diogenes, nor in a cave like the Delphic oracle." 

I A senator's wife receives her friends every Thursday 

j afternoon during the season, and any one stirred by 

patriotic or inquisitive reasons may call. Sometimes she 

1 invites the wives of the representatives from her state, or 

1 the wives of constituents who are visiting, to assist her. It 

is expected that she will serve a cup of tea, a sandwich, a 

salad, or a croquette, ice-cream and cakes, salted almonds, 

and other confectionery, and she must provide for at least 

200 people. This will cost from ;£"io to ;£"20, and must be 

repeated five or six times during the season. While such 

entertainment is not imperative, it is one of the unwritten 

laws of official society. 

There are, of course, a few senatorial families who do 
not appear in Washington society because they simply 
cannot afford it. They have children to educate, and, their 



2o6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

means being limited, they are obliged to deny themselves 
these privileges and pleasures for their constituents ; but 
their usefulness is thereby impaired. "They don't last 
long in office," remarked a politician, " for the constituent 
who isn't asked to dinner in Washington, and with dis- 
tinguished people invited to meet him too, will turn down 
his thumb on that senator's return." 

The wife of a senator may receive in the parlour of a 
boarding-house, but the majority of her husband's con- 
stituents will go home with unfavourable reports of her 
social position and the penuriousness of her husband. 
People like to have their senators and representatives live 
as well as those from other states. Jeffersonian simplicity 
is a beautiful thing in theory, but not in practice. We love 
to read about the able men of our early history who 
obtained their education by the light of pine knots, but 
when we visit our statesmen to-day we prefer electricity. 
Yet every once in a while America rushes to red print over 
our "millionaire senators," and weeps whole newspaper 
columns over our national peril through the exclusive 
representation of " money interests " at the capital 
apparently with no realization that it is practically 
impossible for a man dependent on his salary to live in 
Washington. When people read in the newspapers that 
senators have been detected in stock speculations, and have 
made money in sugar certificates, it is well to remember 
that their salary is only ;£"i500 a year, and that they cannot 
live as senators should live upon that income. It has often 
been suggested that each state should purchase or erect at 
Washington residences for its representatives in the Senate, 
which is an admirable idea, but considered by the average 
politician as more Utopian than the purchase by the 
government of homes for our ambassadors and ministers 
in foreign capitals. At present the personnel of the state 
is most encouraging ; for while there is, in some instances, 
great wealth represented, it is not inherited wealth, but 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 207 

expressive of the greatest acumen and ability on the part 
of the holder ; and men of enormous fortunes in America 
are not given a political career as a reward. But if Uncle 
Sam is going to expect to recruit his public servants from 
the unendowed ranks, and to make a boast of it, he mio-ht 
at least recompense them adequately. "The statesman 
and his salary" might make an enlightening tract for cir- 
culation at home as well as abroad, where our politics are 
supposed to be an inexhaustible mine to the participant. 

European governments provide handsome residences 
for some of their cabinet ministers. Not so in America. 
The salaries of cabinet officers — the Speaker of the House, 
and the Vice-President, who has been called "His 
Superfluous Highness," but is not at all so socially 
speaking — are ^2400 each. 

If suitable residences were provided for the cabinet, 
they might live comfortably upon their salaries ; but, as a 
rule, it costs twice as much as they receive to keep up 
appearances. One member of the present cabinet, when he 
came to Washington to look up a house, was shown a 
residence as adequate in furnishing and location for his 
needs, and was told that the rent was ;^2000 a year. 
" What shall I do with the other ;£"400 of my salary ? " he 
questioned grimly. 

As a matter of fact, a cabinet member cannot live in a 
style becoming his position without paying at least ;£"iooo 
for a residence and ;£'300 more for servants and horses and 
carriages. He is expected to give at least one reception a 
year, which will cost him not less than ;^ioo, eight or ten 
dinners, which will cost at least £^0 each with the greatest 
econom.y, and his salary is exhausted. All this is for the 
benefit of the public, and he is often compelled to appeal 
to a lean purse for funds to provide the ordinary expenses 
of his family. 

I know a member of a recent cabinet who has no 
private fortune. He has been in public life since he was 



208 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

twenty-five years old, and his salary has never been large 
enough to allow him to save anything. Therefore at his 
official residence in Washington he was constrained to 
limit his expenditures to ;£"2400 a year. The women of 
his family had been trained to economy and had a genius 
for management ; another cabinet lady said that they 
could make one dollar go as far as she could make three. 
But although they did the best they could, and lived as 
quietly as the requirements of his position would permit, 
he found himself over £600 in debt at the end of his term, 
with no immediate prospect of earning anything. And 
another cabinet hostess whispered to me, in discussing her 
plans for the coming season, that her husband's aunt was 
critically ill, and that if the good lady had to die anyway, 
she wished she might do it promptly, and put them in 
mourning to save the expenses of a winter's entertaining. 
" I'm right fond of Aunt Maria too," she sopped her con- 
science ; " but with Jack at Harvard and the girls at 
Vassar, we just have to economize ; and a winter in Wash- 
ington does make our salary look like a Swiss cheese." 

The American citizen outside the capital has as little 
idea as the foreigner of the struggle in certain of our 
statesmen's families to reconcile the demands of the 
social pace in Washington life with the bank account 
accompaniment. 

It costs the Speaker of the House ;^5000 a year to live 
and entertain in Washington, and, of course, neither as a 
member of the House before his election to the Speaker- 
ship nor since has he received half that amount in salary. 
Yet, coming out of a political meeting in the West not 
long ago, he overheard two representative citizens passing 
on his case : 

" There goes Uncle Joe Cannon ; he's been thirty years 
in Congress and six years Speaker," said one. 

" Gee ! He must have a fortune," returned the other 
enviously. And the speaker smiled sardonically. 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 209 

The Diplomatic Corps in Washington is more enter- 
tained than entertaining. There used to be a certain 
shyness about intercourse with the Diplomatic Corps — the 
worthy citizens of the capital in the early days of our 
republicanism feared that a mingling with people reared 
to arbitrary standards of precedence and social distinction 
would lead insidiously to our imitating monarchial 
i institutions. But as the Diplomatic Corps came gradually 
to form an essential part of Washington society, it has 
given us an object-lesson which has had its due effect. 
Hence the manners of Washington have become, in many 
respects, like those of European capitals. America's 
I capital is a city of good manners — at least there is a con- 
I scious effort to make it so — and for this happy result the 

presence of the Diplomatic Corps is in part responsible. 

I The Diplomatic Corps certainly contribute an element 

I of splendour to official occasions at Washington. To our 

! rather sombre attempt at society they have imparted 

\ charm and variety, contributing largely to the brilliancy of 

I appearance, grace and polish, we are achieving, and the 

diversity of tongues, giving expression as they must to 

differences of thought, standards and ideas, have added 

piquancy to social intercourse and subdued provincialism ; 

have, in fact, given to Washington her distinction among 

all other American cities of a cosmopolitan society. 

Then there is the multi-millionaire colony, composed 
of men and women who perhaps have failed of social 
success as mere millionaires in New York or Newport, and 
who come to batten on the more motley society of the 
capital. The palaces of these line one of the most beauti- 
ful avenues in the fashionable section, and this is as near 
i a Faubourg St. Germain or a Carlton House Terrace as 
Washington offers. Some of these palaces of the nouvemix 
riches are fantastically and gaudily tortured in interior 
j decoration — I can even forgive an expatriated American 
who remarked, as he entered the great columned and 



210 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

aggressively frescoed hall in one of them : " Ah ! a cross 
between early Pullman and late North German Lloyd " — 
but most of the fagades are magnificent in purity of outline, 
for American architects have used the best of foreign 
architecture as an open book. And beautiful architecture 
has done much to make Washington the most attractive 
residence city in the country. 

There is also the nomadic colony of lesser wealth, 
attracted by the social advantage of the capital, who 
spend money freely and contribute to the gaiety of the 
winter, and who flit off to Europe or to the watering- 
places when the roses begin to bloom in the parks and the 
official world disbands. These, of course, merely rent 
houses for the season, and it may be remarked that 
there are more handsome houses to rent in Washington 
than in any other city in this country and in Europe — 
except London. In other parts of the United States, it 
is looked upon as a confession of financial straits to offer 
your furnished home for rent ; but in Washington, as in 
London, it is good form for prosperous people to have the 
house occupied while they travel. 

In the fall of each year the streets and avenues of the 
most aristocratic sections of Washington are ornamented 
with sign-boards upon lawns or cards in the windows, 
informing the transient residents that the permanent 
population is willing to be replaced for a time if well paid 
for the condescenion. But these signs are uniform and 
read : ** This House for Rent. Furnished," which is a 
startingly bald statement compared with the rhetorical 
triumphs such as " This Bijou Maisonette," or " An Incom- 
parable Opportunity for a Palatial Home," or, "This 
Palatial Residence for Rent," seen in Mayfair. There are, 
to be sure, with us all the " tricks of the trade " and fine 
furnishings, bric-a-brac, and pictures often vanish between 
the time when the lease is signed and the new occupant 
takes possession ; but, after all, the real estate agent is about 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 211 

as universal and international a type for guile as Mephisto, 
and the renting of large furnished houses continues to be 
one of the most prominent features of Washington life. 

Most high officials occupy rented houses. There are 
a number of wealthy senators who own residences in 
Washington ; but superstition vetoes it, since nearly every 
public man who has purchased or erected a home at the 
capital has been retired at the following election, and 
therefore, when a senator or representative indulges in this 
luxury, his friends apprehend defeat. The constituents 
demand show of luxury in the man they send to Congress, 
but they resent his becoming a property owner at the 
capital because that savours too strongly of a withdrawal 
from the home town interests. The "public servant" is 
so in every sense of the word in this land of individual 
freedom, and subject to every whim of his constituency as 
perhaps in no other country. 

Washington is popularly supposed to be a favourable 
\ place for marriages, and from the country over come 
i ambitious mammas to settle during the winter season and 
offer blushing buds of daughters on the auction-block. 
But bidders are few, and ineligible. Most of the unmarried 
men in Washington are officers in the army and navy, 
whose pay is small ; officials in the departments who have 
no prospects ; or attaches of the embassies and legations, 
whose antecedents must be investigated, and, if they are 
without reproach, are usually waiting for a gold mine or 
the millions of a railway king or pork baron. The rising 
men of this new country — those who will control the com- 
mercial and industrial destinies of the next generation — do 
not have time to indulge in the pleasures of the capital. But 
the rich mammas and the pretty debutantes add to the 
rich fabric and fine feathers of the winter season in 
Washington. 

As in most cities, the West is the court end of Wash- 
ington, and on sunny afternoons in January and February 

\ 



212 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

the flurry of carriages with obsequious coachmen and foot- 
men, and the wonderful toilettes, the beauty and glitter 
crowded into the streets of this neighbourhood, almost 
tempts one to fancy that the orbit of actual court life has 
transplanted itself in this democratic soil. 

The comparison so frequently and foolishly drawn 
between Paris and Washington does really hold some truth 
on such afternoons when the fashionable world is abroad 
in its gala attire, giving an animation and sparkle to the 
street scene which suggests the perennial light-heartedness 
of the French capital. 

But society's rule in Washington is over by the early 
spring. If the session of Congress is prolonged, the 
society folk and diplomats linger too with entertainments 
transferred to the country clubs about the city ; but the 
late spring, the summer, and the fall of Washington belong 
to the small-salaried, frankly middle-class people who 
make their living by clerkships in the departments. 
There are over thirty thousand employees of the Govern- 
ment, and they and their families constitute the main part 
of the " other " Washington, 

Since the reformation of the Civil Service, these minor 
officials have been given a permanent tenure of office ; and 
while it has been urged that the former danger of removal 
and prospect of promotion often inspired efficiency, and 
that under the present system the clerks in the executive 
departments in Washington are becoming hacks, hopeless 
but contented, the fact remains that the assurance of 
permanent employment has brought better material into 
the service until, from the vagabond politicians who sought 
a " government job " to tide over to the opportunity for 
more political " graft," we have come to the type of man 
who brings his family to Washington and settles down to 
a lifetime of faithful clerkship. 

The " chief" or superintendent of a division of clerks 
in one of the departments is paid ;£"500 annually, but the 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 213 

average salary of a Government employe in Washington 
is about ;£"240, and a man may live comfortably upon that 
compensation, in that part of the town and from those 
markets devoted to the needs of the " department people." 
There is no city in the world that offers so many pleasant 
and healthful houses at a low rental, and the real estate 
agencies and building associations afford opportunities for 
the erection and the purchase of homes upon the payment 
of small monthly instalments. I know of no city where 
wage-earners are so secure in the pursuit of happiness or 
live so well. The schools are free, and as good an educa- 
tion as any man or woman needs is furnished all comers. 
The climate for ten months in the year is as favourable as 
that offered by any city on the globe, and every Govern- 
ment employe is allowed thirty days' leave of absence each 
year. With a life insurance policy to secure the loved 
ones from want in the event of disability or death, and a 
home paid for, the Government clerk may settle down 
with a satisfaction that few wage-earners enjoy. A large 
proportion of the clerks now on the department-pay rolls 
have been in ofidce many years. Another class of Govern- 
ment clerks are familiarly known as " sundowners." This 
term is used to describe men who obtain positions in the 
Government service in order to support themselves while 
studying law or medicine, or pursuing an academic course 
at one of the universities. The recitation and lecture 
hours of these institutions are arranged to accommodate 
such students. Instead of going to the class-room at nine 
in the morning and at three in the afternoon, as is common 
in ordinary colleges, their classes are called at half-past 
four or five, and at seven or eight in the evening. Thus a 
young man may occupy a Government desk from nine until 
half-past four (office hours in Washington), and devote 
the rest of his time to the pursuit of knowledge, and in 
three years receive a physician's degree or a diploma from 
a law college, or he may have acquired a thorough 



214 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

commercial education at a " business college," that dis- 
tinctly American institution. 

All these young men expect to resign and enter upon 
the practice of some profession as soon as they have 
finished their studies ; but the allurements of official life 
and the uncertainty of success in a professional career 
prevent most of them from carrying out their original 
plans. Many are anxious to get on in the world and 
make reputations and wealth, but they are too timid 
to take the plunge. They settle down under the Civil 
Service law, and are soon firmly rooted for life as public 
functionaries. They marry the daughters of their 
associates, buy little houses on the instalment plan, and 
stifle their ambition. Formerly such clerks were able to 
add a little to their incomes by practising their profession 
out of office hours. It was a frequent thing to see signs 
upon private houses announcing that John Jones, attorney 
at law, had his office hours from 7.30 to 8.30 a.m., and 
from 4.39 to 6.30 p.m., or that Peter Smith, M.D., was 
prepared to receive patients at similar hours. But the 
bar association and the medical association of the district 
of Columbia succeeded in persuading Congress to pass 
laws for the suppression of the " sundown " practitioners, 
and now no employe of the Government is allowed to 
engage in other business. Nevertheless, there are many 
who have money invested in the names of members of 
their family, in shops, groceries, and other commercial 
enterprises, and they even practise medicine " on the sly " 
in their neighbourhoods and among their acquaintances, 
although their signs have been taken down. 

I know a Government clerk who owns an extensive 
nursery, and sends flowers by the car-load to Baltimore, 
Philadelphia, and New York. I know another who 
manages one of the most popular dairies in the city and 
has a dozen milk-wagons upon the streets. Another is 
a partner in the management of a hotel, and the clerks 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 215 

whose wives keep boarding-houses are legion. And this 
small army of what might be called wage-earning gentility- 
is in eclipse during the winter, but blossoms in full in the 
summer. 

The open street-cars (trams with seats in file across 
the car and the sides exposed) are filled with the depart- 
ment people on summer evenings. The women, whatever 
part of the country they originally hailed from, seem all 
to have acquired the Southern woman's aptitude for 
making a charmingly effective costume out of muslin at 
a couple of shillings a yard. The sleeves are short, the 
neck cut a little low — for Washington is tropical in the 
summer months — and a flower substitutes for hat, and 
the effect of a carfuU of this summeriness flashing through 
the purple stillness of a warm night is most alluring. 

One wonders what becomes of the pretty summer girls 
in the winter. You never see them then, or perhaps, in 
their winter clothes, they look so sombre beside the smart- 
looking young shoppers from the social world returned 
that you do not notice them. Perhaps many of them 
are manicures and shop-girls, but they look like veritable 
butterflies in the summer evening. They go on moon- 
light excursions down the Potomac River, to a picnic 
ground with dance pavilion, and dance till the last steamer 
whistles them back to the city. There are several amuse- 
ment parks just outside of Washington, and night after 
night all summer long these organdie-clad summer girls 
and their escorts try all the death-dealing devices for 
exciting pleasure with all the coltishness of a village 
picnic. It is not so different from the summer life in 
other cities, except that it is the only life in an otherwise 
extinct community, and is such a metamorphosis from 
the formality of the winter in the capital. All summer 
there are bi-weekly concerts by the marine band in the 
different parks and circles, and here the scene is wonder- 
fully pretty and singularly tropical. Electric lights are 



2i6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

strung about the band-stand, but the paths taper away 
into the shadows of the trees and bushes, and up and 
down these paths the diaphanous frocks flutter as young 
girls stroll with arms about each other's waist, and casting 
coquettish glances at the escorts sitting on the turf. 
Mothers sit on the benches with folded hands, and their 
youngsters play about. Occasionally a coloured gallant 
with purple hose and cravat will saunter through, a finely 
formed " Mandy " in the starchiest of muslins, on his arm. 
It is no part of hustling America ; it is no part of politico- 
social Washington ; it is Washington, the village, in the 
summer-time. 

You look down the darkened avenues where diplomacy 
and society played their game a few months before, and 
try to imagine those big houses aglow, and those streets 
where now only a stray cat or two scuttles through, as 
filled with the roll and spurt of carriage and motor-car, 
of hoarsely called orders, and the banging of brougham 
doors, but it is difficult indeed to believe that this ever 
had the air of a national capital. 

In the winter season one is not sensibly impressed by 
the presence of a coloured population — at critical moments, 
when a cook is a momentous want, negro ladies of any 
description seem exasperatingly rare — but in the summer 
you can subscribe without reservation to the statistical 
statement that Washington has the largest coloured 
population of any white city in civilization — about 
150,000 of them, the census figures stand — but, after being 
in the city on a Sunday afternoon in mid July, I was 
willing to consider the estimate of 1,000,000 as con- 
servative. They promenade the streets in an unrelieved 
procession of dusky faces, they throng the cheap theatres 
and certain sweet-shops that are open to them, and they 
even drive about in open carriages, and, at intervals, you 
see an automobile carrying a party of ebony complexion, 
and from wondering whether it is the coloured chauffeur 



LIFE AT WASHINGTON 217 

entertaining in his master's absence, or a taxi-driver giving 
his friends the benefit of an impromptu diversion from 
business, you begin to wonder whether that dark gentle- 
man at the wheel may not own the machine himself 
They are dignified in manner and surprisingly well 
dressed, these upper-ten negroes, for in this half-northern 
city the negro population has its carefully defined social 
strata, reaching from the settlement of coloured doctors, 
lawyers, and department clerks — some very efficient clerks 
in the Government service are negroes — which constitute 
the "nigger Fifth Avenue," down through the butlers 
employed in large houses, the porters in large shops ; still 
down to the characters who live in the miserable alleys, 
the blot on the capital's fair face, and peddle crabs on the 
streets, and the semi-rural element who live in white- 
washed cabins on the road-side stretching from Washington 
off to the Virginia hills. These last appear outside the big 
market in the city's heart on market-days, offering the 
products of their tiny garden patch, and in the winter 
they bring in great masses of Christmas greens, and, 
squatting about their little charcoal fires in the midst of 
their wares, the flickering light playing over their shining 
black faces and glistening the whites of their up-turned 
eyes, they make, to me, one of the most picturesque details 
of Washington life. But among their kind they are in- 
exorably of the unelect, and it is no common thing for 
your cook to object to the maid you had considered 
engaging, because, " She don't belong to folks, madam ; 
her as war raised clar out on de Branch Road." 

The sense of caste is as strong among the Washing- 
tonian negroes as among Brahmin. When I interview a 
certain Julius Alexander Lee, coloured messenger on the 
Capitol pay roll, in regard to the character of one Blanche 
Jackson, recommended to me as second maid, I am aware 
that I am addressing a social arbiter. 

"Blanche Jackson," he asks, but more in the form of 



2i8 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

meditation. " Yes, madam. I know nothing derogatory 
to her integrity, madam, but she's been working for 
department people lately." 

There is an inflection of fine scorn that makes me feel 
that these words convey some basis for disqualification 
which the aristocratic Julius Alexander Lee and I must 
fully understand. 

"But what difference " I falter, ashamed of my 

ignorance, yet Blanche had certainly a nice face, and good 
servants are so rare. 

" Ah, madam, there is no classiness of service among 

department folks ; and of course you wouldn't want " 

He waits, and I feel my own " classiness " in the balance. 

" No, no, of course not," I interpose. 

It is a liberal education to live in Washington. 

Had the head-quarters of our national Government, as 
those of other countries, been seated in the centre of trade 
and commerce, the official life might not have been able to 
assume the dominant social tone it has secured in winter 
Washington ; but most assuredly we should have had none 
of the picturesqueness, the uniqueness, of the city built 
up almost exclusively in the interests of Government 
institutions. 



CHAPTER X 
AMERICAN WAYS 

THE American stage holds the mirror up to our 
American ways. We want it to. We want to see 
ourselves as we believe we are. We want to laugh 
at our sectional eccentricities, and we want to contemplate 
economic and social conditions from a distinctly American 
point of view. The " long run " plays in America are the 
plays that are so American as to be almost unintelligible 
when produced in England. Or, when the British public 
does accept them as interesting in their very provincialism, 
mistaken generalizations as to American civilizations are 
apt to ensue. 

Englishmen who had seen " Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage 
Patch" played in London seemed to be under the impression 
that a large part of the United States is populated by just 
such picturesque caricatures, while after the successful run 
some years ago of " The Cowboy and the Lady " the most 
conservative felt that anywhere on the outskirts of Chicago 
murderous half-breeds or romantic episodes with gentle- 
manly plainsman might be encountered. It would have 
been hard to convince those of the English audiences who 
had never been in the United States that the first was 
only a pinch off an obscure Southern city, and the other 
a conjunction of characters that it would be as difficult to 
find to-day as Bret Harte's vicious, gaudy miners, or 
Fenimore Cooper's grandiloquent, blood-thirsty chiefs. 

219 



220 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

For it is provincialism for provincialism's sake ; the result 
of our eagerness for original, highly coloured, boldly 
treated "local " material, with the emphasis of exaggera- 
tion. It is not, as is felt in the work of J. M. Barrie, 
local colour to give background to universal emotion. 
Instead, we want our stage to show us what could have 
happened in America, and, as far as possible, only in 
America. And, above everything else, it must be optimistic. 
Americans demand a happy ending, and comedy gets 
more laurel — otherwise a bigger " business " — than the 
serious play. Tragedy, however true to nature and 
circumstance, is debarred. As a theatrical manager has 
said : " Cassandra was accurate but depressing, while the 
author of * There's a good time coming, boys ' was as in- 
accurate as he was inspiring, and he certainly has the 
American public with him." 

Moreover, our stage has traditions — and it is almost 
the only place in America that has — not traditions of art, 
however, but precedents of make-up and dialect that may 
not be violated. For instance, a Congressman is a stock 
figure in our political play, and no one would dare appear 
in the part of a Congressman without a shiny, out-of-date 
frock coat, a wide, soft hat, and chewing tobacco, so 
inseparable are these acquired characteristics with the 
popular idea of the stage Congressman. Yet many of those 
who applaud the " rugged honesty," or " pathetic credulity," 
or " sneaking villainy," as the case may be, of the shabby 
frock-coated Congressman on the stage, know perfectly well 
that the House of Representatives to-day presents a 
well-groomed front of business suits with the occasional 
appearance of afternoon dress of the latest cut, and generally 
worn by a member from New York. There was a time 
when a good many Southern gentlemen of the planter 
type came to Congress and in frock coats, and, in the 
hard times following the War, they were allowed a 
longer lease of public appearance than the fertile pen of 



AMERICAN WAYS 221 

editors of " styles for men " might prescribe. The Con- 
gressman came into the American drama about that time, 
and, being adjudged very "American," he has stayed, 
shabby coat and all. 

Another tradition is the drawl of the Southern girl. 

She must drawl interminably and express herself in the 

. near-negro dialect. A young Southern woman was 

I recently cast for the leading part in a drama of the South 

' on the logic that she could drawl to the playwright's and 

manager's taste. In a most exciting scene, when pounding 

upon a closed door and with her lover's life at stake, the 

i manager insisted that she should say : " Farth-ah, open 

I th-doah ! " The young actress protested. " Southern 

I people talk just as fast as any one else when they're 

' excited," she urged. But the manager was adamant, and 

I he was right. Night after night crowded houses waited 

I tensely for " Farth-ah " to open " th-doah." 

] And so it goes. Any Middle-west society lady of the 

j stage who does not wear too many diamonds, and at the 

I wrong time, and connive to marry her daughter to the 

j titled villain of the play, does not last. That is the way 

Middle-west society ladies have always conducted them- 

j selves on the stage, and no liberties may be taken with a 

I role so " American." 

j Many American plays have ridden to financial success 
I on a hay wagon filled with real hay, with a male quartet 
: attired in painstaking rusticity and singing "The Old 
J Oaken Bucket." Just about as many have hit the mark 
with a Westerner's six-shooter from the interior of a mining 
camp-saloon with a Greek chorus of impossible cow- 
punchers and the one superbly beautiful " wild rose " each 
community of this sort is supposed to produce. 

So we have our " Old Homestead " and " Shore Acres " 
and " Way Down East " with real turkey on the dinner 
table, and at least two buckets of real water in the property 
well ; we have " The Girl of the Golden West " and " The 



222 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Heir of the Hurrah " type, with real " likker " and real 
gunpowder, and they are all great successes, because the 
American audience sees something it believes to be 
intensely American and is satisfied. 

As to the plot, the first requirement of an American 
play is that it shall be a love story. This is probably due 
to the fact that the majority of the audience is generally 
young and unmarried and feminine. A favourite theme 
is the parvenue daughter living in an artificial atmosphere ; 
ambitious, wistful, proud, who learns through genuine love- 
usually for a poor but estimable young man in her father's 
employ — how to emancipate herself from her condition. 
The changes on this are innumerable, and the American 
audience always thrills to them. There is hardly a successful 
play of city life in which the accession to sudden wealth 
or the depravation of vast property does not figure in its 
affect on character and circumstance. This is, of course, a 
reflection of national psychology, just as is the cold 
reception in America of plays based on the complications of 
class distinction. 

Contrary to the general opinion abroad, the American 
theatre-going public is far from neurotic in its tastes. 
Debatable plays, problems, fantasies of character, so dear 
to the heart of Ibsen and Bernard Shaw, are never of 
marked financial success in America. 

Of course, there are special audiences for these and 
as there is no country in the world where notoriety can 
be as adroitly achieved through the press, there is much 
written and much said over such productions. But, despite 
blazing posters and adroit press notices they do not really 
set the spark to the grass in the field of popularity. 
Their run is short if spectacular. Whether it is a simple 
question of voluntary censorship or of national lack of 
subtlety which creates this attitude, is difficult to determine. 

When an American play is reared on the immortal 
domestic triangle, its construction always depends on the 



AMERICAN WAYS 223 

husband's total absorption in business interests which 
drives his neglected wife to contemplation of the third 
angle. The business is always enormously productive 
and the wife laden with the fruits thereof, yet she is 
represented as a pathetic figure, pining to be pampered, 
longing for the limelight of undivided masculine attention. 
One would hardly consider this a fair view of woman in 
America, but they it is who applaud these plays most 
heartily. And plays of this order always succeed, not- 
withstanding the fact that American dramatic critics have 
long decried them as specious. A critic, commenting on 
one such success, has remarked : " Just the same, if some- 
body would write one little play with a neglected wife 
who offered some reasonable alternative to ' business ' in 
her own mentality, who didn't deserve on the whole to 
play second fiddle, even to a rather small business, it would 
be very comforting. And what a novelty the play 
would be ! " 

French plays, subtle, shrewd, remorseless, and deft as 
they are, do not furnish any reflection of American life as 
the theatre public knows it, and they must be so radically 
altered to get the American atmosphere into the picture 
that they generally end in a hybrid state ; that is, 
because the public insists that the characters must be 
American — not merely dressed like them and talking like 
them. 

A foreigner in a play is all very well, but he must be an 
obvious character part, either in caricature or psychological 
study. American theatre-goers have no approval for 
disguised Frenchmen and German people undergoing the 
trials and tribulations incident to conditions in France and 
Germany. We have achieved American types, and we 
like to see them on the stage. 

Quite indicative of national temperament is it, too, that 
Americans look for rushing vivacity, hilarious humour, and, 
above all, rapid sequence in their plays, while the more 



224 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

philosophic French and Germans deprecate action at the 
expense of reflection. 

But while the American theatre-going public repudiates 
sex as not the whole of life, it apparently fails to appre- 
ciate that it is not the whole of vulgarity either. Un- 
questionably a much broader, coarser humour is honoured 
on the American stage than would be tolerated in 
England. Quite recently I saw the same light opera in 
New York that I had seen during its phenomenal run in 
London, and I realized that the American audience would 
have pronounced the English production " deadly slow." 

Outside the plot and conformity of general staging, 
there was little in common in the two performances, many 
of the lines were changed to coarse repartee, and offensive 
jests were dragged in by every hook and crook, while the 
dancing in the American production was much more 
complicated, much more strenuous, and much more 
suggestive. 

On the other hand, American vaudeville houses are, 
generally speaking, above the " beer, baccy and boudoir," 
atmosphere of the corresponding music-halls in England. 
Vaudeville in America has the family theatre atmosphere 
about it. 

The type of women to whom, in England, it would be 
something of an adventure to be seen at a London music- 
hall, patronizes vaudeville quite regularly in America, 
where this form of entertainment is not given over by any 
means to the " 'Arry and 'Arriet" class. Children abound 
at the afternoon and evening performances, for it 
largely takes the place of the pantomime and fairy play. 
The programme consists of dancing-dogs, performing 
monkeys, one-act plays, and freak musicians, and eccentric 
dancing as in England, but the " coon act," or burnt-cork 
comedy, is a pre-eminently popular feature in America, 
showing that the negro has a variety of uses. 

He is also stock material for the legitimate drama of 



AMERICAN WAYS 225 

war days, or of the type where blood taint is the theme, 
which have a rhythmic recrudescence on the American 
stage. 

Yet a negro can buy a ticket in very few theatres in 
the United States, no matter what degree of refinement of 
manner or education he represents, and when he is 
admitted, it is to a top gallery reserved for his race, and 
therefore known as " nigger heaven.'* A mingling of 
coloured and white over these lofty benches brings it under 
the caption " peanut heaven." 

Seats in the vaudeville theatre are one-priced, and 
the first to come gets an orchestra chair ; the last gets 
"standing room only" for the same price — is. for the 
afternoon performance, 2s. for the evening, while 3s. gives 
a seat in a box. Tickets for all the theatres are sold at 
the theatre at what is known as the " box office." A few 
tickets are left with the ticket agents over the city, and 
seats may be obtained at the hotels, but there is no such 
control of the tickets by manipulation outside the theatre 
as in London. Seats in the regular theatres are cheaper 
in America, eight instead of ten shillings being the 
standard price for the best orchestra chairs in first rank 
houses. Programmes are free, and they should be. In- 
deed, there really ought to be a rebate for those who 
endure them, for they are printed on wretched paper, and 
inevitably transfer a generous coating of printers' ink to 
your gloves. I have never grudged the sixpence for the 
neat English play bill. 

In some theatres candy is sold between the acts, and in 
others a mechanical device for acquiring chocolates in 
response to " a dime in the slot " is attached to the back of 
each seat. But, as a rule, theatres of the better grade have 
no suggestion of public refreshment other than the trays of 
iced water brought about by small boys. 

I think Americans would as soon adopt women motor- 
men as women ushers ; but if they did, it is safe to say 
Q 



226 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

that the young woman would not trip up and down the 
theatre aisles in uniform of cap and apron, however 
reduced to soubrette coquettishness the articles may be. 
When I think of the struggle it takes to get a newly 
landed girl to wear a cap in America, my imagination fails 
to realize American young women wearing any such 
" badge of servitude " as they indicated to people of no 
more independent spirit than theirs where they were to sit. 
Yet in England, the land of uniforms, led by Highlanders 
and hotel porters, who compare favourably with an 
American admiral on dress parade, aproned young women 
ushers seem most appropriate. They certainly do their 
work as rapidly and as expeditiously as the young men in 
conventional evening dress and white gloves do here. 

A curious detail of the unformulated censorship of the 
vaudeville stage is that the word " damn "—in other 
American theatres as valued a stage property as it is on 
the English stage — must be eliminated from vaudeville 
boards. But with the same short-sighted literalness that 
quibbles at the serious sex play, and packs the houses to 
see a vulgar woman in a vulgar comedy role, the vaudeville 
patrons seem not to grasp that vulgarity does not reside in 
verbalism any more than it may in the whole texture of 
song and scene. So it sometimes happens, while the 
vocabulary is carefully clipped, the vaudeville will offer a 
ribald debasing situation or a suggestive balladist as 
humour, and it will be accorded approval by the same 
class of audience which would shudder at it in England. 

Nine-tenths of a vaudeville performance is really of a 
calibre to miserably corrupt a child's taste, and its appre- 
ciation of music or acting, even though there be nothing 
of an absolutely objectionable nature. The wonder of 
foreigners over the great audiences of children pouring in 
and out of our vaudeville theatres is justifiable. 

But because it is merely a *' funny performance," the 
American parent refuses to see how it can injure his child. 



AMERICAN WAYS 227 

And that, of course, involves an argument of comparison 

of the national sense of humour. 

I suppose there are no two nations with a wider 

difference in the standard of humour than the English and 

American. 

Americans can see a French joke or a German one ; 
I x^merican newspapers reprint French and German humour 

continually ; but an American reads an English comic 

paper with a sense of bewildered rage that he is supposed 
i capable of being amused by such utter vacuity. The 
I American's nai've foreclosure of the Englishman as a 
i humorist is humour in itself. When an Englishman fails 

to understand an American joke, it is because he has no 
] sense of humour ; when an American cannot understand an 
I English one, it is because the joke is not funny. The 
1 English are much more credulous and much more polite 

about the American sense of humour ; but any American 
I who has beheld the effect your best American-made joke 
I has of wiping every bit of expression out of an English- 
; man's face, knows that whatever of academic honour the 
^ nation may have bestowed on the Dean of American 
' humour, the individual Englishman wants none of it. 
' To the end of time probably the Englishman will 
> consider the American accrediting himself with a sense of 

humour as the only joke he ever made, and the American 
i will refuse to admit that there is any humour in England 

except, excusing the bull, that of Scotland and Ireland. 

But the lesson of these cross-charges probably is that you 

cannot indict the humour of a nation any more than you 

can indict a nation itself. And, after all, most jokes have 

their geographical limitations. 

I What is noticeable about the American joke is the 
constant use of it. Not the natural ebullition of humour, 
that growth of nature and accident that the Irish have, but 
an effort on every side to produce studied^ obvious, 
strained humour. 



228 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

In our earlier political days, men of homely ways used 
the humorous anecdote in the sense of a parable, and 
campaign speakers brought the issues and arguments home 
to the masses in this way. But as the race of spellbinders 
multiplied, the occupation became entirely that of would-be 
humorists. The political speech has to be funny — a 
long chain of breezy anecdotes. As a veteran stumper said 
to a novice : " Get 'em laughin' and keep 'em laughin' ! 
You can do more with a fellow in a merry than in a 
solemn mood." 

Occasionally an American audience will tolerate a 
serious speech, if the speaker is of sufficient prominence ; 
but the public man generally realizes that he may be truth- 
ful and eloquent in his speeches but he mtist be funny. 

A foreigner is always surprised at the melodramatic 
kind of speeches made on the floor of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, and at the number of apparently professional 
humorists among the members. There is not the 
incidental chaffing which occasionally enlivens the debate 
in the House of Commons — for Americans do not chaff 
easily nor lightly — nor the somewhat heavy persiflage of 
the Englishman ; but there will be whole speeches delivered 
for the purpose of their humour, and throughout which the 
House will give itself over to a seance of laughter, and 
applause. 

"The Congressional Record," that cheering verbatim 
pamphlet in which every detail — almost the sneezes — of 
House precedure is embalmed and ready for free distribu- 
tion only a day behind the performance, has been called 
" The Congression Joke Book," and certainly a perusal of 
the bound volumes leads one to believe that the congres- 
sional version of the noted soliloquy reads thus : 

" To speak, 
Aye, 'tis to joke, and then the laugh 
Must ever follow : 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished." 



AMERICAN WAYS 229 

When once a member has established for himself a 
reputation as a humorist, he can never come down to the 
heavy, commonplace level of serious argument, because 
henceforth, if he should rise in his place and recite the 
Decalogue, his utterances would be punctuated with hearty 
guffaws from all corners of the chamber and the printed 
record of his performance bestrewn, as a matter of reflex 
action on the part of the official stenographer, with 
such bracketed indications of hilarity as (" great laughter ") 
and ("renewed laughter and applause"). Quite recently 
a new member elected to be decidedly witty in his maiden 
speech, and when, months afterwards, he rose to make a 
touching plea for a Bill to pension Government clerks, and 
stood clearing his throat for a preliminary burst of pathos, 
this new member was surprised to hear a roar of laughter 
J sweep over the chamber. 

I " A few days ago, I stood by the side of a bier," he 
j began in sepulchral key and " Dead March " tempo. But 
i he was obliged to take his hands off the oratorical stops 
1 and give another laugh time to stop. The new member 
swallowed hard, and, looking severely about, exclaimed, 
I " No, Mr. Chairman, it was not the kind of * beer * that 

these gentlemen have in mind. I was about to " 

" The Congressional Record's " comments of " renewed 
J laughter " but faintly echoes the veritable howl that 
disjointed the would-be serious discourse just here. 
But the new member was mentally nimble, and he 
grasped the situation. He had branded himself as a 
humorist at the outset and he must continue to make an 
effort to supply laugh food in his speeches or be laughed 
at anyway. So he turned his speech into a chain of 
uproarious, slightly illustrative anecdotes, and another 
chronic humorist was added to the American gallery. 
There are men who have literally joked their way into 
Congress, a glibness and a story-telling faculty having 
persuaded their constituency that they had in them the 



230 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

material of a national law-maker. The humorous speeches 
delivered in the House of Representatives do not, however, 
influence the vote. Working, as the House of Representa- 
tives does, with permanent committees through which the 
Bills are presented and considered, the members have their 
votes arranged before the Bill is offered, and the speeches 
and humour are blank cartridges discharged for the sole 
purpose of putting a member's eloquence and point of 
view before his constituency through " The Congressional 
Record," or to increase his popularity. This mystifies 
the foreigner, who naturally thinks the prolonged humour 
in the American Lower House must have its excuse as 
a farce. Early in the last session a well-known French 
journalist came into the Speaker's room. He was enthusi- 
astic, not to say effervescent. 

" I have made a great discovery," he said. " It is the 
joke, the humour, that sways this great 'Chambre des 
Deputes.' At home they say this legislative body of your 
Republic is the most undemocratic, the voice of the 
individual does not count, since no dissenter, no debater, 
no speechmaker, has any weight after a Bill has been made 
up hard and fast by a committee of just a few men. But 
this afternoon I have seen what it is that moves the 
American Congress. It is the joke, ever the joke, and yet 
more jokes. A man did it for two hours, and I have 
never heard such an ovation as was his. He persuaded 
everybody. It was wonderful." 

" You did not wait for the vote, I suppose," interposed 
the Speaker. 

"What use?" answered the Frenchman. "It would 
have been unanimous. Everybody was with that man." 

" No," said the Speaker, " the Bill for which he spoke 
failed to pass. That two hours of humour did not win a 
single man. As regards the futility of eloquence, it is true 
we permit a good deal of oratory that is just about as 
useless as the buttons on the back of a dress suit. As to 



AMERICAN WAYS 231 

humour on the floor of the House — well, that's a tradition 
that has to be kept up just like baked beans on Saturday 
night in New England. They're used to the diet ! " 
r" The Frenchman looked as if he were murmuring, 
^*Kumour, humour everywhere," and one could not be 
altogether unsympathetic. 

In the after-dinner speech in America to say more than 
" that reminds me " between funny stories is to part with 
the approval of your listeners. The man who really succeeds 
in that form of entertainment merely rises and repeats joke 
after joke, some of them as told on Mount Ararat, to be 
sure, but his listeners will sit with their heads thrown back, 
tears streaming down their faces, and their mouths wide in 
the heartiness of their mirth. 

It is a truly remarkable thing, this American love of a 
joke. 

Newspapers in the large cities have a humorist on the 
staff, just as they have a foreign correspondent, and each 
week he turns out " funny copy " in the form of facetious 
articles, which make up, in the opinion of their American 
readers, for what they lack in spontaneity by the pushful- 
ness and broad effect of their humour. Current events of 
serious importance appear as farcical material in these 
columns. 

The editorials (leaders) in an American newspaper are 
followed by a half-column of detached paragraphs, each 
containing a humorous fling at the policy, personality, or 
predicament of some public man, an epigrammatic mis- 
statement of some discussed event, or a sarcastic reflection 
upon items of news as culled from some " esteemed con- 
temporary." The tabloid humorist who does this, is 
known as the " paragrapher," and his place in the news- 
paper office is that of the actor who travels with a company 
and draws his salary for giving half a dozen " imitations " 
at each performance. It is the knack that counts. 

The " make-up " of English newspapers in much more 



232 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

dignified than is popular in America ; still, one hears 
everywhere in London the expressed regret that *' American 
methods " are gaining ground in English journalism. 

But, on picking up one of the London sheets which 
had been included in this criticism, I found a two-column 
article on " Historic Doubles," signed by a well-known 
writer, on the chief news-page ; while in fine print in the 
corner of a last page I found such items as *' Father and 
Two Children Drowned," "Fatal Family Feud," "The 
Alleged Outrage at Torquay." When I reflected how im- 
possible the first article would have been considered in 
any daily edition in America, and in what display type 
news of the latter stamp would have been handled, I came 
to the conclusion that English papers were not slipping at 
any alarming rate into " American methods." 

The sensational newspaper in America is, as has been 
well said, a "literary highwayman," not only in that it 
attacks, defames, and plunders character, but in the lack 
of integrity in handlings news of any character. A veteran 
in the newspaper field of action gave the following as 
illustrative of their method, and declares that it is not 
hyperbole — 

" Suppose a man registers at a hotel in New York as 
Hiram K. Wilcox, Sheriff of Cass County, Iowa. The 
hotel reporter comes in, and reports the fact to the city 
editor. The city editor pricks up his ears. * What, county 
sheriff,' says he, * fine ! * Great funny story in that ! I 
remember when I saw Charley Hoyt's * Temperance 
Town,' or some such play back in the eighties. There 
was a comic sheriff in that. All country sheriffs wear long 
chin whiskers and linen dusters and say, * Wal ' and 
' B'gosh.' Smith, send two men out with Sheriff Wilcox, 
and have them stay with him as long as he is in town. 
Get up an ' Old Homestead ' story ; report his doings every 
day — the quaint things he says, the funny dialect he uses, 
the ways he tries to jump out of the elevator under the 



AMERICAN WAYS 233 

impression that the building is being blown up, and how, 
when he goes into a barber shop and sees the manicure 
girls, he says, * Be them actresses rehersin' ? ' And take 
an artist along and let us have a lot of one-column comics 
every day. Introduce him to Sheriff Foley, and have 
them photographed shaking hands." 

And the next night the reporter comes in and says, 
"Nothing in it, chief. This sheriff is the author of 
* Wilcox on the Nebular Hypothesis,' and before he went 
West he was the head of Wilcox and Goodwin, brokers, 
of 9, Wall Street. The first thing he asked me was if 
I had known W. D. Howells. There's no funny story 
in this." 

"There isn't, hey?" shrieks the city editor. "Why, 
man, the pictures are all made. There's got to be a funny 
story. You sit down and write it, and be sure you get 
in the * B'gosh ' and the ' Wal,' and don't forget the 
duster." 

Naturally, it is only the yellow journals that misrepre- 
sent things in that fashion. The serious ones, while they 
do not have these very excellent articles on the " which- 
ness of the why " which flourish in English dailies, have 
much more literary form in presenting the actual news 
than is common in the English papers. This is probably 
because men of higher ability are employed as reporters 
(pressmen) in America ; also because the general injunction 
of an English newspaper office is to " boil it downr 

Special articles usually are paid for at the meagre rate 
of £1 a column in American columns, so that no one who 
could possibly get his work into any of the myriad of 
American magazines would be a casual contributor to a 
newspaper. But, on the other hand, men regularly on 
a newspaper staff are trained to special lines of reporting, 
and receive good salaries. An average would be about 
;f700, while the editorial writers, business managers, or 
managing editors receive from £ 1000 to £2000. Of course, 



234 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

in New York and Chicago there are a few men of national 
reputation as special writers or newspaper managers who 
command spectacular salaries. But they are very few. 
American newspapers pay surprisingly little attention to 
foreign news. Even the big New York dailies do not give 
their leading columns to foreign affairs, except for foreign 
war news, and then it will be topped usually with head- 
lines that would not be thought suitable in size for an 
account of a local fire or the elopement of an heiress, or 
even perhaps a street fight ; for our newspapers are in- 
credibly provincial in the main. They even sail blissfully 
ahead, ignoring every part of their country but their own. 
Very few of them ever take the trouble to get acquainted 
with sentiment outside of the city in which they publish. 
But this is far-sighted and not short-sighted policy. 

Each American public wants to read about itself, and 
the newspaper is only catering to its particular audience. 
For instance, there may be a political revolution brewing 
in our West, a deflection from old party lines of wide- 
spread contagion, but the average newspaper reader in 
New York isn't any more interested in the details of it 
than he is in the details of a controversial British budget. 
He dismisses the outbreak in the West as a mere excite- 
ment over the new tariff law, and demands every scrap 
of information in regard to a scandal investigation going 
on in the capital of his own state, even to the colour of 
cravat worn by the accused ; while the latest bulletin of 
a murder trial in his own city deserves more space, to his 
thinking, than the news of a railway catastrophe in South 
Dakota with forty-five lives lost. 

One point about the American newspaper always 
strikes English people as ludicrous — the " social column " 
— in which is printed without charge everything that is sent 
into the office, and without discrimination as to whether 
it is from Mrs. Stuyvesant Van Reypen, whose husband 
has several millions and an old family back of him, or an 



AMERICAN WAYS 235 

announcement of the debut of the daughter of Mr. and 

Mrs. James Smith, residing somewhere near the outward 

terminus of the city car-system. The announcements 

which filled this department when "society's summer 

plans" or later "snapshots of our summer resorters" are 

due, betray the youth of our nation as few things could. 

The public is enlightened to the effect that "Miss Mae 

I Jones, of Tintown, Penn.," is summering at Atlantic City, 

where she is the belle of the Board Walk, and a picture 

, of Miss Mae Jones of Tintown, Penn., in a bathing-suit 

with half a dozen other pretty young women who have never 

, been within telephone connection with a social register, 

I substantiates the statement. Or the '* social column " will 

I be swollen by the importance of an item like the following : 

' " Miss Max Sonsheimer, a prominent society matron of 

I Harlem, has sailed forEurope on the " Campaignia," accom- 

1 panied by her beautiful daughters, the Misses Inez and 

i Louie," and if the pictures of the " Misses Inez and Louie " 

( do not follow, it is because Sonsheimer phe was too busy 

I in his " wholesale cloak and suit establishment " to attend 

* to his family parting injunctions. And this is in our 

metropolitan press. Of course, the goings and comings 

and costuming of the real social lioness with a roar and 

a reputation are duly chronicled, as in English papers, 

j down to the last tea-room appearance and frou-frou and 

1 jewel. And a combination of musical criticism and fashion 

I notes has the same strangle hold on journalism here as in 

England. 

But the women reporters on the Washington papers 
who chronicle society at the capital are easily the stars in 
their profession. There being only two occupations in 
) Washington — politics and society — interest is confined to 
two things : trying to get a promotion, and trying to create 
the impression that one is a social lion. And in the latter 
quest the society reporter is first aid. 

She goes her rounds among the people in high ofl[icial 



236 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

life, having private audiences, when she is furnished lists 
of dinner guests, plans for the season's campaign, and many 
surprisingly confidential details of a nature, one of these 
young women told me, to make the possibility of retiring 
and writing most saleable memoirs a comforting prospect 
for old age. 

' The daily mail of a head society reporter on a Wash- 
ington paper rivals that of the Secretary of State. 

She has cards for teas and receptions of every descrip- 
tion, where it is hoped the hostess's manner and frock will 
not escape her attention, and she receives by post all sorts 
of stories about the affairs of those who wish to spread the 
idea abroad that they, too, are among the shining ones in 
the social life of the capital. There is really not much 
difference between the real article and the climber as far 
as the ease with which the society reporter gets her copy, 
for those who are sought are just as eager to contribute 
as those who blow their horn unurged, so that the melange 
in the two or three columns in a Washington daily devoted 
to social news in the height of a season is wonderful to 
behold. The climbers who have money, and the back- 
street hostesses who have only ambition — to put it politely 
— have their lists of " among those invited " sandwiched 
between an account of a White House Musicale and a 
dinner at the British Embassy. The wife of an attache at 
one of the foreign embassies discovers that social herald- 
ing is free in the United States and the announcements of 
her " house-guests " ; her own out-of-town visits and her 
returns there from ; her influenza ; her recovery and fresh 
plunge into the social whirl ; her frocks and her hospitality, 
appear with mysterious accuracy and promptness in these 
social columns. One would think the society reporter a 
most impertinent, curious individual, if one did not know 
that she is more often a phonograph than an investigator. 
This '* open door " policy in our press notices is the one 
form of American naivett\ it may be remarked, that 



AMERICAN WAYS 237 

foreigners take seriously. To many of our American 
official circle in Washington the social column may seem 
laughably like the first piano in a young household ; but 
there is an inclination to play it early and late. 

A certain man who says he "sits on the porch and 

watches the Washington procession go by," has remarked 

: of this marvellous bureau of social publicity. " The range 

' is infinite. I counted the items about the wife of one 

assistant secretary in one month, when the social season 

had hardly begun. She was coming, came, hired a house, 

I opened it, went to New York to see her mother, had her 

' mother come to see her, sent her mother back, went to one 

I or two near-by cities — in all she got her name in the 

j social column over nineteen times in one jnonth. A very 

ambitious and resourceful woman, I should say." "^ 
\ Of course, there are cultured and socially prominent 
' people who know how to give a dinner or a dance or a 
I reception without telephoning to the society reporters or 
\ writing it out and sending the copy down to the offices. 
! There are those who do give functions that are not 
] described at length in the papers, but they are not so 
I numerous that the social columns suffisr at all. Most of 
I the people at the capital are willing or eager to have their 
{ little personal and social attempts chronicled at full length. 
I Not long ago I heard a woman of refinement and many 
years' residence in Washington actually deploring the fact 
1 that Washington society was ceasing to be picturesque ; 
that we were becoming conventionalized at the expense of 
individuality. As she upheld the view with incidents of 
early day public receptions at the White House, when 
carpets and curtains were torn in the turmoil of promiscuous 
hospitality, and the spectacle of a fireman sitting on a 
divan at a White House entertainment with his arm about 
the waist of his best girl excited no comment, I more than 
suspected her of irony. But I wonder whether a winnow- 
ing of obscure hostesses and their obscurer guests from 



238 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

the official important events would rob our infant prodigy 
society at our capital of any of its charm. It would 
certainly rob Washington newspapers of a unique and 
most popular feature. 

The Sunday edition of an American newspaper is a 
vaudeville performance in print. It is the family paper 
just as the vaudeville is the family theatre, as it contains 
from twenty to fifty pages, and there is something in it for 
every member of the family. The comic supplement in 
colour and the " cut-out " puzzles show how the American 
child figures even in the newspaper world. Puritanic 
elders speak disapprovingly of Sunday papers, but suffer 
their gaudy monopoly of the living-room of a sabbath 
" because the children so enjoy the pictures." There are 
patterns and frocks and stamping designs for blouse 
fronts and table linen, and complexion receipts, and 
obesity treatments, and symposiums in housekeeping 
whereby the editor holds his feminine constituency. 

A separate book supplement of some twenty pages 
bound with a picture cover in colour, quite like the regular 
weeklies on American news stands that sell for 2^d., is 
published each week by a syndicate, and given away with 
the Sunday edition of some one paper in each of the large 
cities. This newspaper magazine contains short stories 
and light (very light) articles, all illustrated, and it is 
difficult to see how such an elaborate feature can be 
included under the 2jd. charge for the entire Sunday 
newspaper and be found profitable. 

Other forms of magazine supplement give picturesque 
views of the latest scandals, popularized accounts of 
scientific discoveries, the fads of the day as seen through 
a carmine magnifying glass, and all garnished with large 
illustrations. The American reading public's passion for 
pictures is pretty nearly its grand passion. Incidentally 
illustrating pays enormously in America when one has 
established a vogue for a certain type of feminine beauty 



AMERICAN WAYS 239 

or an eccentric touch. Our advertisement pictures are the 
work of well-known illustrators. Artists limn from the 
same models illustrations of the well-dressed lover in 
the magazine stories, and the live dummies in wholesale 
clothiers' advertisements, for these same popular magazines. 
The caption beneath is a help in distinguishing one from 
the other. If the legend beneath says, " Elinor beheld Jack 
hurriedly coming over the campus," you will know it is an 
illustration for one of the magazine instalments of literary 
fudge, or if the lines beneath say, '*Our Nobby Sophomore 
Sack Suit — Send for Self-Measurement Instructions," you 
will know it's the other. You can also, it should be 
confessed, tell whether the picture has gone into literature 

i or trade by reason of the fact that the advertisments are 
in the back. 

But the first requirement of the illustration in the 
Sunday newspaper is that it shall be sensational. Some 
of them, succeed in being startling, but neither the 

Uext nor the illustration is actually salacious. The 
typical Sunday newspaper in our large cities is probably 
not debasing the moral currency so much as it is violating 
good taste. And, after all, we are faced with the anomaly 
that the Sunday newspaper offends refinement, but that 
refinement and the demand for the Sunday newspaper 
could not exist side by side. And it must be admitted 
that in America the newspaper editor is an inspired 
individual on what the public wants. 

It should be said, too, that there are several New York 
papers, the Sunday editions of which are dignified and 
their substance literature. But of course the flamboyant 
type is always pronounced "very American," just as the 
use of certain words is supposed to constitute an American 
dialect. 

As a matter of fact, many of the words animadverted 
upon as indefensible Americanisms by British cousins are 

solidly established in honourable ancestry, and, without 

11 
b 

V 

I 



240 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

discourtesy, I would call attention to the fact that while 
Americanism serves as a term of reproach in the mouth of 
a British speaker, so does Briticism in the mouths of 
American speakers. 

Unfortunately we mutually either glare or laugh at 
the correlatives in English and American usage. The 
American uses " brakeman " or ^' trainman " for the 
English " guard," — Stevenson attempted the Americanism 
but got it "brakesman" in one of his stories — while our 
" freight train " stands for ** goods train " in England, 
"stem winder" for "keyless watch," "elevator" for "lift," 
and "street organ" or "hand organ" for the British 
" barrel organ." And so it goes. Certain words are used 
in both countries but indicate different things. " Corn " in 
England means " wheat," but in America " corn " is 
" maize." The English " calico " is plain cotton cloth, the 
American " calico " is printed cotton cloth. 

In the matter of university vocabulary America has 
borrowed " varsity team " and " varsity crew," etc., but 
"campus," as applied to the open space between college 
buildings, is our own, and " sophomoric " which has become 
a most useful epithet to signify an unformed, cubbish 
mental state, and is in universal application in the United 
States, is unknown in England. 

We took the word ** depot" from the French and 
misused it ; later, attempting to substitute " station," 
with a slight movement now towards using the British 
" terminus." 

On the other hand, the American " caucus " has been 
taken across the Atlantic by changing its meaning to 
signify what we are wont to describe as the political 
** machine " or the " organization." America fittingly has 
contributed words of frontier life, such as "blaze" (to 
mark the trail through the woods by chipping off bits of 
bark), which is used now figuratively as well as literally in 
England and America. 



AMERICAN WAYS 241 

An Englishman refers to writers who ** blaze the way '' 
as readily as an American does ; and " shack " (a cabin of 
logs driven perpendicularly into the ground) is intelligible 
in London as well as Australia. " Maverick " (an unbranded 
steer at Jlarge, to become the property of the first ranch- 
owner whose men may chance upon it) is known among 
all English-speaking ranchers. Americans have made a 
verb out of lumber (timber) and "to lumber" means to 
deforest a locality to the extent of cutting all the timber 
on it. Analogous to this in England is the making from 
" banting " the verb " to bant." We also use the verb " to 
launder," and " laundry " means not only the place where 
linen is washed but the linen itself. America is also 
responsible for " elevator " in the sense of a storehouse for 
grain, and " ticker " to designate a telegraphic printing 
machine. Citizens of Uncle Sam's kingdom are guilty of 
certain disfigurements of speech, such as the prefacing 
"Well," "Say,"" I tell you," "It's just no use talking," 
" Mercy," etc., which are heard as futile enforcement of any 
remark. But if criticism on this comes from England there 
is sure to be the reply that the oft-recurring, " You know," 
" Don't cher know," and " I fauncy " of British speech is 
just as disfiguring. 

Contrary to the general understanding abroad, there 
are no dialects in the United States. 

Even the so-called dialect of the cowboy is not a true 
! dialect at all; it is simply carelessly colloquial English 
with a heavy infusion of fugitive slang. The sectional 
difference in speech in America is merely a matter of a 
few localisms and a variation of inflection and pro- 
nunciation, and this not as marked as between different parts 
of England. And it is a matter of a few slang phrases and 
not a dialect between upper and lower class in America. 
To be sure the geographical curiosity of the letter " r " in 
the United States never escapes comment. It is the r's 
which are responsible for the alleged "American brogue'* 

R 



242 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

in the Middle Western and Western states. " The Western 
girl with her r's," sighs the English tourist. " It makes so 
many beautiful and accomplished women utterly impossible, 
'you know.' Or, after you have proved yourself an 
Easterner, he confides that Western people are finely 
American ; yet they do seem to be unable to utter a sentence 
without setting one's teeth on edge. And yet I doubt 
whether the average American finds the well-bred English- 
woman's chromatic inflection of phrases pleasant, let alone 
intelligible, in his ears. I, myself, never became callous to 
the jar of hearing England's upper class meet her lower on 
the common ground of dropping final g's on their " ing " 
words, or of pronouncing " -ow " like " -er." 

An American saying " feller " for " fellow " would be 
relegated to the same class to which " caikes " for " cakes " 
consigns one in England. But ''just " and " such" on the 
American tongue are apt to sound like "jest " and " sech " 
and we have to confess to an inordinate fondness for the 
use of " guess " (inclined to think) in the Yankee sections 
and of " reckon " (consider, or deem) in the South. We do 
say " kind of" and " sort of " in spots — even " kinder " and 
" sorter " — and there is a shameful abundance of " ain't," 
" awful," and " mighty " (taken from its high place as an 
adjective and made an assistant adverb) in the average 
speech in America, until it is small wonder that cultured 
Englishmen have protested occasionally against American 
mangling of the mother tongue. 

There are, however, other more material things upon 
which America takes her stand of protest. The English 
tip is one of these. 

The American stands in no mute amazement before 
the fact that skilled artisans, even the small official in 
England, will accept tips, nay, even depend upon them, as 
a means of increasing his income. There are situations in 
America when "to tip or not to tip" may be a question, 
but apparently in England there is no negative. 



AMERICAN WAYS 243 

Every American visitor to England knows this story ; I 
am quoting from another telling — 

The promenade deck of the Atlantic liner just leaving 
Southampton for New York is crowded with home-going 
Americans. The steamship pier is crowded with Britons 
— porters, cabmen, and idle lookers-on — all unmistakably 
English. The gang-plank is lowered, lines cast off, 
handkerchiefs waving farewell from pier to deck. 

Suddenly Smith — Smith of Akron, Illinois, or Keokuk, 
Kansas; at any rate American, "all wool and a yard 
wide " — leans over the deck rail and thus apostrophized the 
crowd on the pier — 

" Good-bye. I've been all over your country. To the 
best of my beHef, I've tipped the whole population — includ- 
ing the policeman. If I've missed anybody, it isn't their 
fault. In case I've overlooked any of you chaps, excuse 
me and take what I've got left." 

And Smith, drawing both hands from his trousers 
pockets, flung ashore a shower of English coppers. 

Of course this is an American story and, on the face of 
it, more a reflection on American manners than facetious 
criticism on an English custom. For tipping, in the 
ordinary sense of the term, is of course not an English evil, 
but a world-wide evil, and I presume it would take a 
conference of nations — and not of the Peace Conference 
variety, perhaps — to abolish it ; and the American tourist 
who goes about England giving tips six times too large to 
waiters and cabmen is the last person to cry out against 
the tipping practice ; but it is the different classes to be 
tipped in England that does confuse the American idea of 
what he calls the dignity of labour. The distinction of 
who may be tipped and who mtist not be tipped in the 
United States is a pretty definite distinction. Any one 
who serves you personally in a menial capacity you may, 
you are expected to tip, and at a higher rate than in England, 
and your tip is generally undeserved, while in England 



244 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

it is the small tariff on excellent service. But to offer a 
tip to any man who tinkers, mends, makes, or trades for a 
living in America is to offer him an insult. If there is a 
waiter or a cabman in America who will not take a tip, I 
have yet to hear of him ; but the telephone mechanic, 
carpenter, plumber, piano-tuner, shop-girl, plumber, or 
cabinet-maker who expects a tip is quite as imaginary a 
character. 

One tips the grinning negro porter in the " Pullman " 
car ; but offer an American railway " conductor " in charge 
of your train a quarter of a dollar, and see what will 
happen ! He will inform you that he is a self-respecting 
man, who attends to his business and is paid by his 
employers, and he wants none of your tips. 

The Englishman is amused at this, because he notices 
that this same haughty official will accept the cigars worth 
far more than the repudiated shilling when offered in 
jovial camaraderie by the male travellers, and will expect 
to return in off moments to lean against your seat making 
friendly comments on scenery and weather. He will 
enter into whatever general conversation is taking place 
in the smoking compartment with an attitude of absolute 
equality. But he resents the coin tip. And the 
American thinks the European official in the same class 
is going to be as proud. It does not occur to him that the 
fine manly-looking guard at his first railway station in 
England would take a tip. On the way to London, 
however, at each stop the fine-looking guard comes to his 
compartment, informing the occupant with admirable 
dignity that he is the guard and that he has the tourist's 
luggage with him in the forward van, and gradually it 
dawns upon the American that the fine-looking, uniformed 
official not only will accept a tip, but is hinting for it, as a 
child might for an orange. 

The American thrusts a shilling into the guard's hand, 
and immediately feels a loss of respect for him, a shame 



AMERICAN WAYS 245 

for the mankind that had stooped to demand it, not 
realizing that the man has merely called his attention 
most courteously to a custom of his nation — that tipping, 
as everything else in England, is a system, and that his tips 
represent to the guard quite as commendable a part of 
his income as the stated wage, which is small because of 
this very allowance for perquisites. 

But the American and the Englishman can no more 
find the same point of view on the working-man's wage or 
his tip than they can possibly come together over that 
"strictly illegal proceeding" called the Declaration of 
Independence. 

As the ancient German summarizes all futile dis- 
cussion : " The world may never decide whether it is better 
to wear night-caps or not ! " 



CHAPTER XI 
HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 

IN the year 1778, a British patriot, of the Hessian Yager 
Corps, who were fighting the American rebels, wrote 
home that, " in America the milk is not rich, as in 
Germany ; the bread is not so nourishing, and many of the 
people are mad." There have been other strangers 
within our gates since then, and perhaps in less justifiable 
positions for criticism than the hungry mercenary, who 
have not hesitated to accept American hospitality and 
then to castigate us for its shortcomings. The masculine 
critic of this order is not to be feared, because he is 
generally of the type who comes over here already 
knowing a great deal about America, because "he has 
met Henry James at the Authors' Club," and usually 
discounts his statement that our hospitality is either a 
barmecide or pie on a railway lunch-counter, eaten with a 
knife, by some such assertion that " in Pittsburg people's 
faces get so black with soot that several white men have 
been lynched by mistake ; " or he waxes epigrammatic, to 
the effect that "America's sole contribution to humanity 
is hurry." 

But as hospitality is largely the expression of woman's 
sphere, the feat of the titled ladies who lend their superior 
presence from time to time to American efi"ort at entertain- 
ment from hearth and hotel must give pause for thought. 

246 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 247 

' The foolishly sensitive among us sat up rather straight at 
the parting shot of one of these — 

" Your social diversions are rather amateur, I think," she 
confessed to the delighted garnerer of her " American 
Impressions." " I have been entertained charmingly many 
times. But so very many of your chiefest events seem as 
crude as a child's tea-party, where broken glass glitters 
finely, and there are three tablecloths and all the cookies 
one wants ; but we know the little hostess is only imitating 
mamma as well as she knows how. You imitate mamma- 
society-over-the-water, and you don't always do it as well 
as you might perhaps." 

I do not know in what spirit this gentle aspersion 
found this courteous guest's personal hostesses ; perhaps, 
calloused by former thrusts, they merely congratulated 
themselves that they had not been patronized as 
" warm-hearted," not condoned as " social villagers " ; 
perhaps they found compensation in the law of mental 
reservation, and indulged in certain " impressions " of their 
own. 

But discourteous, or merely tactless, or truth-proof as 
we may consider the charge of amateur hospitality, it 
courts consideration if we are ever going to grow up and 
disown the faint praise perpetually bestowed on us as a 
"young nation." And it courts comparison with our 
next-of-kin " society-over-the-water " with the English 
"mamma society." 

Here we touch upon what seems to be the fundamental 
difference between the English and American society — 
the foundation of class-consciousness which at once 
supplies the scheme, and the simplification of all English 
hospitality. If you are of the aristocracy in England, 
apparently it does not make any difference how you 
entertain — nothing can be lost, there is nothing to be 
achieved in the way of position ; and if you are not of the 
aristocracy, no matter how you entertain, you deceive no 



248 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

one into thinking you of it. There is one thing, and 
perhaps only one, which can greatly bridge the social gap 
around the aristocracy, and that is the possession of genius. 
And there you are. Hospitality in the upper classes 
supplies a meeting-ground for persons of exclusive 
interests, and hospitality in the great middle class is 
merely the working of the inexorable law of a cutlet for a 
cutlet, between people of fixed social stratum. Hospitality 
becomes the normal expression of a frank desire for social 
intercourse. 

In America the scale of entertainment is the rating of 
the socially elect. The elaborate menu, the rare musical 
talent for after-dinner recital, spectacular decorations — 
these are the lances with which the new-comer must enter 
the society jousting that is ever in session in America. 
And so we have sensation-seeking, extravagant hospitality 
as the requisite of social supremacy, and, there being no 
acknowledged class barriers, it becomes a universal effort 
of all classes to eliminate the appearance of material 
distinctions. The constant effort to make our entertaining 
represent not ourselves or our income, but the income of 
a class above us in earthly possessions, honey-combs our 
hospitality. It gives a hysterical rather than a wholesome 
atmosphere. The showlness, the lavishness of our 
hospitality is indisputable, but the personal and affec- 
tionate note in the hospitality among the middle classes 
abroad is wanting here. 

There is no distinction between an effort to " do society " 
and hospitality. We seldom open the door of our homes 
to the guest, unless the stage is set for an appearance of 
greater wealth than we really enjoy, of greater formality 
than we dream of in our everyday life. There is ambition 
and pride back of it. If the housewife of a £700 income 
entertains as handsomely as the woman whose husband is 
making ;^I500, she will become a "dinner person " on the 
list of ;f 1500 households, and will have moved up a peg 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 249 

socially. In the meantime, of course, the woman whose 
social basis is a ;£"i5oo income is trying to entertain as 
often and as expensively as the hostess with a ^3000, or 
even ;^4000, annual backing. I recall a situation in point. 
An Englishwoman, the wife of an attache with the British 
Embassy in Washington, found herself much entertained. 
The luncheons of women guests only, where hats are worn, 
the midday light excluded in favour of colour-shaded 
candles on the table, and an almost endless array of courses 
served, drew her first comment. American men, even in 
Washington, the city of leisure, never went to lunches, she 
was told, and as for the elaborate menu, it was " what 
everybody had," governed by an inexorable law of con- 
vention, which makes it a do-or-die situation for the 
hostess. Then the dinners, seldom for less than twenty 
covers — more often between that and thirty — the guests 
seated at one large table, that generally gave the servants 
scant moving space, with again the tedious, elaborate menu, 
and no attempt at conversation beyond the jest and 
humorous anecdote. The Englishwoman met her 
engagements perplexedly and unenthusiastically. "But, 
of course, I can't entertain so elaborately on my husband's 
pay," she averred philosophically, " it would be absurd. I 
shall give just little, simple dinners, and have the people 
I really get on with to Sunday night supper." 

And she did, to the real entertainment of the favoured 
few, ^who were charmed to find that a dinner company 
might be made an occasion for " getting on " in friend- 
ship, and not a stiff and glittering function monotonously 
along the conventional lines as defined by a hotel menu. 
Not that the Englishwoman worked any revolution in 
Washington entertainment. Indeed, part of her success 
was because her simplicity struck Washington hostesses 
as "so delightfully queer" and "very original." The 
shock of this simplicity can be imagined when it is 
realized that the simplest dinner deemed "proper" by 



250 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

the American hostess in Washington is along the following 
lines : 

Grape-fruit or hors d'oeuvre 

Raw oysters 

Soup 

Fish 

Entree 

Roast 

Birds 

Salad 

Frozen pudding, cakes, bon-bons, etc. 

with the liquid accompaniment of — 

Cocktails 

Sherry 

Sauterne 

Claret 

Champagne 

Liqueur. 

Even at the very modest houses, the guests being absurdly 
numerous, there is necessary the partner's card on entering 
the drawing-room, place cards at the table, and very often 
checks for wraps in the dressing-room. 

The Englishwoman's Sunday suppers, usually of 
impromptu inviting, and haphazard advance to the dining- 
room, consisted of chicken salad, a dish of cold meats, with 
a sweet and cheese with the coffee. 

But the Englishwoman's shock came when she learned 
that several of the homes in which she had attended what 
she frankly termed "extraordinarily fussy" dinners and 
luncheons, were on a basis of income no larger, in some 
cases not as large, as her husband's army pay, which, on 
assignment to this diplomatic post, had been raised to 
£(po. Then she learned that hospitality with us is some- 
what in the nature of social window-dressing; that the 
woman who gave elaborate dinners on a small income gave 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 251 

only one or two a season in place of the series of informal 
suppers ; that the service was almost entirely hired for the 
evening instead of being, as in her case, the work of her 
parlour-maid and waitress, her children's nurse, and her 
own cook ; that outside of these few-and-far-between 
formal dinners the American family lives en dishahilU ; in 
fact, considers the ceremony of the ordinary English menage 
as very funny, and that the children are sent to free day 
schools, avoiding the governess or the tuition fees of the 
English expense account. So that, while in a country where 
the type of hospitality is prescribed by classes, the spectacle 
of a household of ;£"7oo income attempting a formal banquet 
or two each season, and thereby considering themselves in 
society,' would be a laughing-stock, the cost is no more 
than that required to support the normal English house- 
hold, and in America it is an expression of the national 
characteristic — ambition. Misapplied, no doubt, for there 
is very little solid comfort in the city homes of people who 
have ;f 700 a year, and who find the effort to make the 
ends of it meet over a waste and foolish hospitality so 
difficult. But in this apparently shoddy and superficial 
strain of character, which makes her hospitality all along 
the line an effort to offer something obviously expensive, 
and in conventional circumstances, with a false setting of 
wealth and luxury, lies the reason and explanation of many 
things American. In the first place, what Hawthorne said 
may still bear light — 

" These Englishmen are certainly a franker and simpler 
people than ourselves, from peer to peasant ; but if we 
take it as compensatory on our part (which I leave to be 
considered) that they owe these noble and manly qualities 
to a coarser grain in their nature, and that with a finer one 
in ours, we shall ultimately acquire a marble polish of 
which they are unsusceptible, I believe that this may be 
the truth." 

And it is certainly true that Americans, owing perhaps 



252 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

to the greater development of their nerves and sensibilities, 
have left behind much of the unembarrassed directness of 
the English, as an older but, in a way, much more primitive 
people. The Englishman, who frankly complains of his 
"poverty" — not the up-to-date cant of the extenuating 
method as applied to one's resources, but an open admis- 
sion that it is a struggle to meet his expenses — has no 
duplicate in America. It may be a subtlety which has 
come into the character with the mixed strains, environment, 
climate — any of the expedients resorted to by national 
psychologists — but the fact remains that " putting the best 
foot forward " has reached a high art, if as yet it merely 
appears as a high crime of hypocrisy, in America. In this 
lies largely the explanation of why you are rarely invited 
into a family dinner or Sunday evening supper in American 
homes. 

Another reason why hospitality is on a more or less 
artificial basis here is that the American man abhors 
social life. He has no small talk for his dinner partners ; 
he is almost always absorbed in some scheme to make 
more money, and naturally in no mood to make it a topic 
of conversation, even with the other men, over his after- 
dinner cigar ; and then he is, as a rule, too exhausted to 
look upon any effort of entertainment to which he 
must contribute as anything but torture. Not long ago I 
was escorted out to dinner by a man who was absolutely 
silent as the courses came and went, and responded to all 
efforts at conversation with a non-committal, though 
attentive glance. But toward the close of the dinner, a 
wide-range, feminine remark on current politics, thrown 
out in despair, caught his attention, and during the next few 
minutes I learned more than I ever expect to in a similar 
period again. But the minutes were few, and this drawing 
of fire a game of remote chance, and while he confessed 
later to having been more dead than alive when he 
presented himself before his hostess, of such guests 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 253 

successful social functions are not made. It is an average 
case The social lion in America is represented by a few 
men doing light literature, a very few statesmen, the foreign 
diplomats accredited to Ameriea, and, since our Puritan 
conscience has somewhat removed the national opprobrium 
from " play-acting," by the actor of scholarly success. 

Conversation at the formal dinner in America never 
becomes general. There is never any topic of common 
interest in a company assembled by the haphazard sheafing 
of all invitations the hostesses have received, wholesale 
reciprocity and not selection being the basis of endeavour 
where entertainments must be so expensive. One woman 
unconsciously epitomized American hospitality when she 
complained : " We cannot ask our friends because we are 
not indebted to them, and when we do entertain, we try to 
take in as many as possible to whom we are indebted, and 
have it over with. It just amounts to doing something 
you don't want to do for people who don't want you to do 
it, and it costs ! " 

The average American man dislikes formality of any 
sort. Relaxation means reversion to crude manners, and 
he always suspects that the foreigner who affects society 
and who prefers a walk on the boulevards to reading the 
Sunday newspapers with his vest eased, is a " light- 
weight " or a " lady killer." 

I met one type on a recent visit in England which 
would be a seven-days' impossibility in America ; the 
man, generally youngish, who with most slender income but 
gentle birth, lives in a round of visits to well-known houses 
always an acceptable guest, always amiable, often with a 
fund of clever talk, and guaranteed to simulate mild flirta- 
tion when the emergency presents. As a rule he keeps 
small lodgings in London, from whence he sallies forth to 
his round of dining and lunching during the season ; but 
the bulk of each year he distributed among the hostesses 
from whom, to put it boldly, he accepts board and lodging 



254 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

in exchange for services as social-utility man. One 
hostess, explaining the identity of such a guest— with 
circuitous courtesy, of course — added that she had grown 
as fond of him as if he were her own son. In this case 
the man was not strong, and there seemed nothing 
unmanly about his taking a living out of hospitality, but 
I could not help reflecting over the difference of the 
average man in America to whom the acceptance of 
formal hospitality gives such discomfort that the scratching 
for a living in the work-a-day competition, with an 
occasional chance to go to see a " musical show," as the 
only desired recreation, has a look of heaven-sent alter- 
native. This comparison is akin to the criticism that our 
army officers make a poor showing in society when on 
their diplomatic assignments, and its rebuttal in a recent 
magazine article, which claimed that the army life in 
England among its officers was a kind of sporting club, 
requiring a certain income to belong, and one was expected 
above all to cultivate a gentleman's tastes ; whereas, in 
America, the army officer was obliged to look to his 
profession for his bread and butter. His devotion was, 
therefore, to his business, first and foremost, and his ideal, 
the achievement of material advancement, not becoming a 
social ornament. And the writer off-set the story that an 
American army officer had responded to an invitation 
from the Turkish charge d'affaires in Washington, by a 
type-written note beginning, " My dear Mr. Bey," by the 
anecdote of a British officer who remarked, on his return 
from the Boer campaign, that "South Africa was a 
beastly place. There was weally no amusement there 
until Lady Fitzdoodle came out and gave afternoon teas. 
Then it was rather nice ! " 

But it is with hospitality, as with other matters of 
comparative excellence between England and America, 
that we do bigger things better — but that in the higher, 
finer details of life we are not on a par. The average of 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 255 

intelligence in the United States is far higher than it is in 
England, but I think we must admit that in the nobler 
departments of intellectual achievement we are as yet 
inferior to the English. The standard, both in litera- 
ture and in the fine arts, is higher in England than it is 
here. It is the same in respect to oratory. The average 
of the speaking in the House of Commons is lower than it 
is in the American House of Representatives, but the best 
English speakers surpass the best American speakers. 
Even the judicial opinions of the English judges are better 
expressed than those of our judges — more racy and 
spontaneous, more literary. In learning generally, especi- 
, ally in theology, there can be no question of English 
I superiority. So it is with hospitality. On a large scale, 
I in the public entertainment of foreign guests on our 
' shores, in the great and tumultuous opening ceremonies of 
1 expositions, in the great hotel banquet, we excel. 
I Foreigners were amazed at the unlimited, dazzling 

i hospitality offered by the city of New York, on the 
occasion of a recent historical water-pageant in which 
battleships from several nations participated. There never 
has been a foreigner of note or notoriety visiting in the 
United States who has not been publicly dined and wined 
to the limit of his physical endurance. 

But with the retail part of hospitality, with the 
intimate welcome to vine and fig-tree, we would not have 
anything to do. At least we have achieved as yet little 
national grace in that high art of personal hospitality. 
The guest who dares to " drop in " to an American home 
unannounced is a very courageous person, and even near 
relatives are forming the habit of eating at hotels and 
restaurants rather than, expect a welcome if they happen 
to be in time for meals but cannot announce their coming. 
The hostess who uncomplainingly provides wafers and 
ices and salad for two or three hundred persons at a (so- 
announced) " small tea " dislikes to have a friend drop in 



256 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

without warning at meal time, and few people are guilty 
of such a thing. More often than not marriages scatter a ' 
family over the continent so there is not possible the 
continual visiting between married daughters and sons 
and the parents. It took the institution of " Old Home 
Week," with its public celebration and hospitality, to bring 
about the annual pilgrimage of scattered native element 
back to their original homes, family reunions being of 
secondary consideration. 

Week-end stays are exclusively the indulgence of the 
very rich in America. There is one thing which militates 
mightily against private hospitality in the United States, 
and the development of a poised type of hostess here — 
that the servant-girl, never a product approaching the 
demand, is disappearing. On this point the census figures 
speak plainly. In 1870 there was one servant-girl to 
every eight families, in 1900 only one to every twelve, and 
yet, during these thirty years, the number of self-supporting 
women — that is, the actual labour market — has more than 
trebled. To put it plainly, forty years ago one woman 
in two, thrown upon her own resources, would tend to 
select housework for a living ; thirty years ago only every 
third woman entered domestic service ; and ten years ago 
only one woman in four rapped at the kitchen door; 
while to-day a vast population of housewives turn vain 
eyes toward the immigrant station in the hope that there 
will be enough foreign peasants to go around. The 
various current explanations of this scarcity of servants 
has been offered elsewhere, but it seems, after all, as if the 
answer, as formulated by a clever journalist, might be 
sufficient : " The trouble with the servant-girl in America 
is that she wants an easy job terminating with an easy 
husband." However, the fact remains that no cook or an 
inferior cook in the kitchen cuts off a large class in America 
where entertainment as an exchange of courtesy is un- 
known. For, in spite of the fact that there is an annual 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 257 

recrudescence throughout American newspaper offices of 
symposiums on how to give a luncheon of twelve courses 
and twenty guests with one servant, it would take a 
stronger faith than the average maiden lady writer of these 
columns can inspire to effect a test of this miracle. 
Among this class of one servant or no servant abroad 
there is always a neighbourly round of entertainment, but 
, not so in America, where housework has no status of 
! dignity, no pride as an art, and when, as far as possible, 
the fact that one does one's own cooking is at least a 
vertebra of the family skeleton. The really prosperous 
housewife in Germany who invites you to afternoon coffee, 
[ or supper, or to dinner, and is rather hurt if you do not ask 
I for the recipes of the cakes and savoury dishes she has 
I herself prepared, is replaced in America by the young 
' housekeeper in a flat with one untrained maid, who 
I would think it impossible to offer you such entertainment 
I as her own and the maid's incapable hands could provide, 
j and who puts the money which might have been diverted 
I to home hospitality in a new hat, a weekly matinee ticket, 
I or in taking half a dozen of the people to whom she is 
' socially indebted to a restaurant of Bohemian flavour, 
where, in a private room, she may have an inordinately 
j spiced delicatessen repast, including vm ordinaire served 
I for 5s. a cover. 

j One young woman explained to me what a find she 

I had made in a Hungarian resort, where the waiters looked 

[ like " scarey brigands," and amid tinkley *' rag-time " and 

j many mirrors, she could dine six people for £\^ including 

I the 2s. tip to her more than satisfied brigand waiter. 

And when she had explained to me what dinner giving 

in her flat had formerly cost her in mental anguish, her 

; secret anxieties, her long and studied preparations, her 

j palpitations of fear and hope, her diplomatic differences 

I with her green cook, and her heart-quakes for the right 

I going off of things without her supervision after the 

s 



258 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

guests had arrived, I did not blame her that the mock 
Hungarian Bohemianism seemed a deliverance from 
genuine hospitality, but I blamed her mother. 

Whatever may be the significance, however, of the 
cheap foreign restaurant in regard to our home hospitality, 
it may not be beside the mark to observe here that most 
of the Italian and French restaurants serving tables d'h6te 
in New York City offer you a better meal for a lower price 
than you would get in Paris or Rome or Naples. There 
the prevalent ideal is five francs, with neither wine nor 
coffee included. While I know of a certain Italian place 
on a good avenue in New York, which I will not locate 
more definitely, lest I be suspected of being a partner in 
the enterprise, where a splendid lunch or dinner may 
be enjoyed for fifty or sixty cents, " vino compreso." 
The material is excellent, and the treatment artistic, and 
the company of a simple and self-respecting domesticity — 
fathers and mothers of families, aunts, cousins, uncles, 
grandparents. As an American, reviewing the charm of 
the foreign restaurant in his own country, has said : ** I 
do not deny a merry widow hat here and there, but the 
face under it, though often fair and young, is seldom a 
merry widow face." The same kind and harmless types 
form circles about the tables in certain restaurants farther 
down town in the cheaper rental districts, where a French 
table d'hote is served for fifty cents, but with a bouille 
baisse added which I should not, but for my actual 
experiences, have expected to buy for treble the money. 
But there are plenty of Italian and French tables d'hote 
for the same price all over New York. 

If you venture outside the Latin race you pay dearer 
and you fare worse, unless you happen upon one of those 
shining halls in which my young hostess friend did her 
entertaining. 

If you go to a German place, you get grosser dishes 
and uncouth manners for more money. I do not know 



I 



Jj 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 259 

why that amiable race should be so dear and rude in its 
American feeding-places, but that is my experience. 
Still, even those Germans are not so dear as they are 
in the fatherland, though rude. 

So will be seen the attraction of the cheap table d'hote 
for our young couples. If it helps them to do with one 
maid or with none instead of two, it makes for cheapness 
of living ; for service, what there is of it, in America, is 
costly, and it is greedy, and, except in large households, 
its diet is the same as the family's. So that the young 
fiat-dweller reasons that anything that reduces service 
is a saving, the replacing it by ability of her own being 
only an inspiration of desperate necessity on the part 
of the American housewife. 

Of course, the table d'hote which is cheap for entertain- 
ing, or a regular refuge for one or two, is not cheap as 
I a family programme for more, and it is not available if 
there are children. But, as my young hostess friend 
explains : " Most people of that income have no children. 
They cannot afford them." But in the way she has noted, 
they can afford to entertain w^hen they have no children. 
And such things are in America, in spite of our young and 
tender conscience, supposedly of Puritan manufacture ! 

Still, when in England, I waxed sentimental over the 
little ivy-clad house which always remains to the American 
as the Englishman's ideal of home-nesting, the English- 
man to whom I spoke smiled broadly and replied genially : 
"Ah, yes, the little ivy-covered house which he readily 
I lets to others, with photographs of his dearest friends, 
and his knick-knacks, which are souvenirs of birthdays 
and mournings ! " So perhaps the young couple and 
the cheap restaurant combination in our large cities are 
not points from which national hysteria need start. I 
have always regretted, however, that the hotel and the 
theatre played such an important part in our hospitality 
further up the social line ; that our hospitality should 



26o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

represent so little outside matter of food and drink. 
However, there being no art of conversation, the theatre 
naturally takes its place. From sitting at a formal 
dinner, with the necessity for keeping up the appearance 
of conversation, to enjoying the lines of trained talkers 
or singers, is, of course, a pleasant change. Your hostess 
is met at the theatre, and a supper-party follows in the 
palm-room of some large hotel, where there is festive 
clatter, and fountain splash and insistently struggling 
orchestra melody until the last guest has seen fit to 
depart. For although decollete is still uncomfortably 
rare — for the visiting foreigner who has essayed it — at 
the theatre or in the hotel restaurant, and American hotels 
still frown prohibitively upon the feminine cigarette, the 
average closing hour of these " palm-rooms " is 2 a.m. 
And matrons high of collar and unimpeachable character 
may be seen loitering over wine suppers with tired husbands 
whose business absorption fights with sleep. One un- 
deniably clever woman told me that she blessed 
the fashion of hotel hospitality, since she had so many 
"business friends" of her husband's thrust upon her for 
diplomatic attention, and she always " tired out " the man 
and wife at a hotel dinner, this being so much less intimate 
than the home dinner, and admitting of a withdrawal of 
friendship if the guests proved impossible. This is a tiny 
phase of the question, but we cannot help feeling how much 
better it would be in general if we could establish a regime 
of simple hospitality in the home. We who are really, 
in our free-handed way, so far from the Wordsworthian 
policy of " tea and bread and butter you may have, but if 
you want meat you must pay for your board," are hiding 
our impulsive generosity behind ideas of formality and 
artificiality in the hospitality we offer. Over comparatively 
simple dinners abroad there is an atmosphere of wit, and 
of friendly ease, and social grace, and a matter of poetry 
and art, and intellectual ease in the exchange of comment 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 261 

and conversation. In America, we hide ourselves behind 
the glitter and distraction of a hotel dining-room, or make 
a show-case of our homes, in which the guests are expected 
to conduct themselves with about the animation of lay 
figures. And the pity of it is that the American woman, 
who really could develop into a splendid type of hostess, 
is not having her chance. Some one has said that the 
Englishwoman receiving a bidden guest is an indescribable 
combination of warmth and frost. " The London hostess's 
invariable mode of precedure," writes our humorist, " is a 
sudden inordinate gush of welcome, followed immediately 
by an icy stare. By the time you have politely responded 
to the welcome, your hostess has forgotten your existence." 
English hostesses always seem to me very like that 
peculiar kind of flowered chintz with which they cover 
their furniture — the kind that looks like oil-cloth, and 
is very cold and shiny, very beautiful, very slippery, and 
decidedly uncomfortable. 

The American hostess, on the contrary, is usually too 
effusive, too anxious to please, to approach poise. But she 
is sympatica ; and when she can be persuaded to believe 
that things in the kitchen will progress without a concen- 
trated effort at absent treatment on her part, she is 
charming even if, as an Englishman has said, " her mind 
don't jell." All the average American hostess wants 
is practice. 

Outside of dining hospitality, however, the greatest 

difference of all between the social life in the two countries 

is in the make-up of society. In the first place, in England 

it is not, as here, a society of the young, or at least of those 

who still appear young. Here we regard society, visiting 

and entertainments as the national but frivolous relaxation 

\ of youth ; it is arranged for the young. In England it is 

I looked upon as the necessary meeting-ground of all ages. 

j The rigid age limits which we draw about our parties are 

unheard of there. Dancing is only a small part of a ball 



262 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

or a reception ; so many of the guests have come with no 
other idea than to talk to their old friends. Even at 
dinners in England a girl is never asked without her 
chaperon. 

There is something distinctly provincial in our division 
of youth and age, as if a young man could have nothing 
to say to a dowager, as if a girl must be bored by a 
brilliant man merely because he happens to be old enough 
to be her grandfather. It is a little incongruous to have 
the younger children of a family one is visiting invading 
one's privacy at all times, ordinarily dining with one and 
staying in the drawing-room late at night, but find the 
young-lady daughter fed in the pantry and dismissed 
upstairs on the occasion of a " dinner " because she is too 
young to appear at the elderly function. 

However, in the South — in the good old Southern 
families at least — there is no such segregation of youth and 
middle age, no such hedge of formality in the entertain- 
ment. In some of the churches in the South one finds 
lecterns, fonts and communion services presented to the 
infant churches by the kings and bishops of London in 
colonial times. And to-day the people in the South 
throw open their doors to the guest, coming either by 
heartfelt urging or quite by chance, with all the simple 
hospitality of the early days of those prosperous, high- 
living, manorial settlements. The English writer cha- 
racterizing us as a " nation of villagers " has, nevertheless, 
said something which may to-day be proudly held as an 
exposition of Southern hospitality. " When a nation has 
been newly cleared and settled by casual ambitious 
colonists," he claims, "without any common industrial 
traditions or body of custom, socially it is in the village 
stage." In a glorious village stage of neighbourly de- 
pendence and prodigal sharing Southern hospitality revels; 
whatever they have, however they live, the guest shares. 
They are a law unto themselves, and the law is embodied 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 263 

in the fact that diamond-back terrapin, and baked possum, 
and sweet potatoes, and fried chicken, and water-melons, 
and five kinds of hot bread, form a repast fit for a king, and 
you, the guest, are the king, as far as their efforts to set 
these marvels before you is concerned. The President, 
who recently toured this section of the country through 
continuous banquets of possum and sweet ** 'taters," was 
accused by the facetious Northern press of trying to steal 
[ a march on Southern votes through the pantry window. 
, But any one who knows the spirit of hospitality there 
: realized the village spirit of home-made entertainment in 
' the South that outran, not sealed, political pledge. 
I When a Northern woman says: "When you are in 
my part of the country, I shall expect a visit," in nine 
cases out of ten she would be astounded at a literal 
i( interpretation. But the Southern woman's, "If you all 
I don't come and stop at our place next winter, I'll never 
I speak to you again," means that you are definitely invited ; 
I and to engage rooms in a hotel anywhere near her home 
would burst the bounds of etiquette and friendship at 
I once. 

If fortune has reversed her family's position in worldly 
I goods, you may have to listen a good deal to tales of 
' former grandeur ; but no one can do otherwise than marvel 
j that the Southerner still finds it in his heart to be hospit- 
I able when his section of the country has been invaded and 
j trampled and devastated by his own countrymen in the 
I wake of a civil war. As a Northern guest in a Southern 
home, I heard a Northerner urge her small son not to 
*' Shermanize " the garden in his play, and realized that 
that Northern general's name has standardized wanton 
destruction in the region of his famed march for which the 
nation crowned him. 
J And yet in that section of America where civil war 
1 destroyed homes and the fabric of living do we find 
preserved the simplest home hospitality of the land. 



264 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

An Englishman complained that he had gone through 
New England hoping that some one of his hosts would 
serve him the national dish of " pork and beans," or that 
he would have "pie for breakfast" offered him in true 
"Yankee" style. But neither ambition had been satisfied 
until he stayed overnight in a Maine farmhouse, when the 
flurried hostess apologized for both facts as not " being 
citified and proper." 

I know if he went South he had the local viands from 
" corn pone " (fiat cakes from corn meal), and bacon, to 
terrapin and acorn-fed ham and luscious fruit according 
to the circumstance of his entertainers, offered to him with 
the easy-going satisfaction of true village hospitality. 
There is no effort to be " citified " in the hospitality of old 
Southern families. Manorial hospitahty and gentlemanly 
leisure are the ideals to which the Southerner chngs — 
often pathetically — through depletion and poverty and 
the revolutions of a commercial age. 

There is an exuberant hospitality in the West, but it 
is the expression of wonderful prosperity, a new-rich 
lavishness, a pioneer desire to spend and display, a 
warm-hearted boy's inclination to invite every one he sees 
to his party ; while the spirit behind Southern hospitality 
is to share whatever is at hand, with only a courtly sigh 
for the times when he might have done more for you. 

As to the hospitality upon which America puts a price 
at her hotels, it may be said again that it is more impres- 
sive, has a more palatial entrance, is more luxurious in 
general, also more expensive and infinitely less comfort- 
able in detail for the average sojourner than that dispensed 
at the English or Continental hostelries. There is in 
every large city one or more of these enormous hotels ; 
in New York almost twice as many as in London, varying 
only in degree as to combinations of architectural features ; 
in the amount of Russian and Italian marbles in the lobby, 
the length and decoration of the long first floor corridor, 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 265 

which is always motley with dress parade, and called, on 
that account, " Peacock Alley " ; in the quality of paintings 
upon panels and ceiling of the ballrooms ; in the variation 
of capacity above the one-thousand mark ; and in the 
ability of its management to " do " its guests to the 
maximum of charge from boot-polishing to menu eccen- 
tricities. I am not as sceptical as some who heard the 
tale in regard to the following : — 

I " An Oxford professor, one of the quiet, unobtrusive 

men of learning who live buried in their books and forget 

to eat their dinners, went over to New York to attend 

; the meeting of a distinguished international society, of 

: which he was one of the most distinguished members. 

;' He stopped for the night at a friend's house off Fifth 

J Avenue, and the next morning took a cab for one of the 

( big hotels round the corner. The cabman charged him 

= $5 for a three-minutes' drive, and then left him in his 

■i spectacled, scholastic shyness in the hotel lobby. 

< "The clerk, seeing the $5 bill go to the cabby, drew his 

1 own conclusions, and, with the overwhelming attentions 

] which gave no chance for inquiries as to prices, ushered 

i him into a lightning-conductor lift, and thence into a 

I magnificent suite of rooms, apparently designed for visiting 

! emperors and the pocket-books of multi-millionaires. It 

I took him some time to recover his equilibrium, and then 

I his scientific soul was so overwhelmed with curiosity to 

study the complexities of all the bells and turnspikes that 

I communicated downstairs, and promised to bring you up 

[j about everything under the sun — if you could only get 

( the hang of the thing — which took him another hour or 

two, and then his watch told him the evening was too far 

advanced to change his abode for that night. 

" So he ordered up his dinner, being afraid to venture 
down for fear the clerk would hustle him back into greater 
gorgeousness and multiplicity of bell-signals. 

" He found that he had a private bath ; but it offered so 



266 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

many different kinds of baths that he lay awake all night 
wondering which he ought to take the next morning, and 
heartily wishing for the good old-fashioned tub he had 
left behind him. 

*' The next morning, wanting his shoes polished, and not 
yet having solved the mystery of the bell-signals, he 
caught a passing waiter, who came into the room and 
shouted through the tube down to the office : * The man 
in 27 wants a gentleman up here to black his shoes ! ' It 
brought a grinning darkey, who pocketed a dollar bill with 
a ' Thankee, sah,' but gave him no change." 

An Englishman to whom this was retailed remarked 
that if such an experience of being '' done " (adopting the 
American vernacular) were to happen in a reputable, first- 
class hotel in London, the man could sit down the next 
day and write to " The Times," and the hotel would soon be 
going out of business. The Americans who listened 
looked cynically reminiscent. Probably each remembered 
some instance of having been '' done " in an English hotel. 
Certainly English hotels do " do " the foreigner. But it is 
almost always along lines which, after a little experience, 
you can guard against. And it is only on petty things 
amounting to petty sums, more exasperating to your 
temper than hard on your pocket-book, and, after varied 
experiences, I must agree with the Englishman that it is 
only the American hotel that is " smart " and nimble 
enough to act the high-handed thief. 

An American statesman, in a speech-making tour, 
arrived at a New York hotel with barely time to make the 
necessary change for his next appointment. With this in 
mind, he had brought his evening clothes in his grip, 
allowing his other luggage to follow him. But his evening 
vest was discovered by his wife's discriminating eyes to be 
somewhat soiled. The " hotel valet " whose presence was 
advertised on a card stuck in each mirror was consulted. 
Valet protested that he could not clean the vest in time, 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 267 

but would bring one from his stock. The substitute proved 
to be a shop-worn, cheap article, and the statesman, unable 
to recall his own from the valet's quarters, was forced to 
wear it. The value could not have been over 8s., but in 
the statesman's bill appeared the item " one evening waist- 
coat £2 8s." 

At the New York hotel, which is the acknowledged 
head-quarters of foreign dignitaries coming to this country, 
and from which has fluttered in compliment the flag of 
every nation, from the yellow silk dragon to the Black 
Eagle, the royal suites rent for ;f 100 a day, and the 
payment of ^20 to £'^0 a day for a suite is not uncommon. 
The average room with a bath would rent for £2, £1^ or 
£^ a day, according to location and equipment. At 
hotels of slightly less world-wide fame the room and bath 
average ;^i 8s. a day. In London hotels of the same 
standing, bedroom, sitting-room, and bath would rent for 
about £\ d. day. 

American hotels above the first two floors of ornate 
luxury are a disappointment. The rooms are small and 
stuffy, and furnished with cumbersome pieces of furniture, 
which must have been promoted upward on a basis of age 
without regard to use or appropriateness. All the details 
for comfort found in even small London hotels are lacking. 
A night-table at the side of the bed is a rarity ; if there is 
a bed-lamp, the switch to adjust it is almost invariably 
across the room. The bed is generally placed to receive 
the full glare and blast from the windows, while the dressing- 
table is sequestered in a corner or a pocket alcove. We 
are a little more conscientious than we used to be about 
the presence of the waste-paper basket and the number of 
bath-towels accorded the upper chambers of our large 
hotels, but the bath-rug, the bath thermometer, the shelf 
accommodation for toilet articles and bottles — the points 
one never misses in a London hotel, even when the bath- 
room is a re-modelled cupboard — are no part of the average 



268 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

accommodation in America, where you are paying for the 
luxury of walking through an onyx lobby. On the other 
hand, the closet room is generally more than ample and 
built in — not one of those upright sarcophagi in many 
London hotel rooms, that vibrate ominously when an extra 
heavy skirt or cloak is confided to their interior — and there 
is generally a writing-desk stocked abundantly with paper, 
bearing the picture and the biography of the hotel as 
heading, and we cannot avoid the conclusion that 
advertisements governed this consideration for the patrons' 
convenience. On each story of many hotels of the first 
magnitude there is a desk for information and general 
reference, presided over by a woman clerk, and as there is 
an arrangement of multiple mirrors reflecting the doorway 
of almost every room on that particular floor, and the lifts 
too are thus conveniently kept under surveillance, one has 
one's suspicion as to the full mission of that institution 
also. But one is particularly suspicious of being made a 
free advertisement medium in America. Recently an 
American impresario of note entered his club and 
solemnly addressed the smoking-room assembly : " The 
Great Coquelin," said he, " is dead. He died two days 
after Rostand had come up to Paris from his hilltop house 
in Cambo to rehearse * Chanticlere.' Had that happened 
in America," continued the impresario, striking a long- 
sufl*ering attitude, "the press would have declared- it to be 
an advertisement for Rostand's new play." 

But to return to the American hotel. It is the price 
that really inconveniences the person of moderate means. 
On entering an English hotel a slip bearing the price of 
the room allotted will be handed you as you leave the 
desk. In America, to ask the price is to court a stony 
stare or a haughty response of the maximum and minimum 
cost of accommodation, and you take what the clerk 
considers your appropriate tariff. 

The restaurant charges are higher in American hotels. 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 269 

Just before leaving for Europe, I stopped at a New York 
hotel, which, though large, has no pretensions to being of 
the ultra-fashionable, and for a very modest dinner of raw 
oysters, half a chicken, a vegetable, and a small bottle of 
wine, I paid 19s. 2jd. At a hotel in London for the same 
meal I paid los. Of course, our protective tariff on wine 
might be said to account for part of that discrepancy ; but 
for a breakfast of half a grape fruit, two boiled eggs, and a 
pot of coffee I paid 4s. in the American hotel, and a more 
varied and better-served " combination " breakfast can be 
found in a hotel of the same character in London for 2s. 
" Combination " breakfasts or other form of table d'hote 
are not popular in large American hotels. Particularly are 
we spared, I may say, the temptation of the table d'hote 
after theatre supper of certain London hotels. That 
" square meal " in courses, taken late at night and hurriedly, 
in view of the inexorable turning out of lights in the 
London restaurants, is always viewed with horror by the 
Americans, even of the gourmand type, who wants 
the rarest but least substantial of lunches at that 
hour. 

American imagination and ingenuity contrive to offer 
a greater variety of menu at the big hotels, and if you can 
pay a dozen prices for it, you can get anything on a cold 
winter day that most people enjoy eating in the hot 
summer, and vice versa. But people who know how to 
live — which most Americans have to go to Europe to 
learn — find that sort of a thing as a steady diet about as 
interesting and pleasant as eating sawdust every day. 
The people about a large New York hotel present interest- 
ing study. Of the majority you can only say that they all 
seem to have money and to handle it with a careful care- 
lessness. There is generally a sprinkling of opulent 
Westerners, who sit around and stare at one another, and 
each group believes the other to be New York society 
people. There is always an element of the parvenus who 



2/0 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

have drifted into hotel life in the metropolis with a wild 
sense of extravagance, and who wear stage clothes and 
look as if they " expected to put a gold dollar in a slot at 
every step." Of course, there are always some of the real 
people among the eddying, dining throng ; but unless there 
is some gathering of society pre-arranged, they are few, 
and they usually do not look the part. One American 
has ventured this diagnosis : " New York society people 
are like those of every other metropolis ; they are quiet, 
simple, usually plain and stupid, rather tired of their money, 
and rather cautious of it, from force of habit and a fear of 
looking ostentatious." But I do not think the tea-room 
of certain New York hotels, between five and seven on 
afternoons in the season, would illustrate this description 
any more than the night display at the horse show or 
about the horseshoe of stalls at a grand opera per- 
formance. 

Americans have contracted the tea-habit in so far as 
it admits of public indulgence, and the palm-rooms of 
American hotels blossom for this observance, as elsewhere, 
into an even division of those who come to see, and the 
other half element of gorgeous raiment who trail in to 
reserved tables to be seen. The large hotels in America 
miss few points in the game. 

The second-rate hotels in America seem impossible, 
and, below second-class rating, unspeakable. Nowhere in 
America can you find the quiet, unpretentious but dignified 
hostelries like those century-old little hotels in London off 
Piccadilly and Bond Street ; or in Paris, in one of the 
numerous delightful little hotel pensions off the Champs 
Elysee, where you are as comfortable and quiet, and your 
wishes as completely catered to, as if the house was your 
private residence, and every deferential servant there 
belonged to your personal establishment. In the cheaper 
hotels here all is bluster, clatter, and noisy ostentation ; for 
the American does not go to a hotel for old-fashioned 



HOSPITALITY AND HOTELS 271 

comfort and simplicity and refinement. He goes there 
when he has money in greater or less degree of superfluity, 
and he wants the impression that he is making a noise 
spending it. As for the little hotels in the country towns 
in America, they can only figure as nightmare memories 
to any one who has had full experience. It really 
haunts one — the soiled table linen, slatternly, impertinent 
servants, the guests eating as if the house were on fire 
or they were fearing a famine ; the uncouth manners ; 
the ghastly pie and soggy doughnuts at breakfast ; the 
dinner, with countless little dishes around your place 
containing various things, but all tasting from the same 
pot ; and the outrageous bills ! But it must be realized 
that, in most of the phases of American life, we are 
dishevelled because we are growing too fast ; that we 
toss our shortcomings to the surface in the very seething 
of progress ; that we are still boiling, and not yet ready 
to be run from plastic into the mould of our established 
civilization. 

There is not the false brilliance of the stagnant pool's 
iridescent surface. Neither are we by nature a phlegmatic 
nor a bucolic people. We may, therefore, weigh America's 
all-round veritably active state against the discomfort of 
the chambermaid who openly examines your clothes that 
she may have her spring outfit made "just that style " ; of 
the lack of hot water ; and the hall-boy, who is too intent 
j on reading an account of the latest prize-fight, or a recent 
" lucky strike " in Western mineral lands, or even a law 
text-book, to answer your bell ; in fact, all the discomforts 
of our small hostelry in its over-ambition to be " citified " 
and get what comfort as a weary traveller we may 
therefrom. 

Any American who has motored or tramped through 
rural England or France will remember the clean little 
inns everywhere abounding, with wholesome cooking, 
respectful servants at one's beck and call any minute. 



2/2 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

sweet-smelling bedrooms, looking out upon garden spots, 
of privacy, comfort, and moderate prices. 

But few real Americans, after all, would expatiate 
themselves merely because our automobile roads are bad 
and we have no bovine servile peasantry, comfortable as 
such details are. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE WEST AT HOME 

A VETERAN stage-coach driver, the seat of honour 
beside whom I was granted on a coaching-trip 

through Yellowstone Park, confided mournfully that 
automobiles have just been substituted for the old Concord 
coaches on one of the pioneer routes of the Colorado 
mining camps. It was the last of the old stage lines, and 
he expressed fluent sympathy for the " Eastern folk," who 
had never known the romance of the days when the old 
stages of egg-shaped bodies went rolling and rocking and 
plunging through the wilderness, and hold-ups and rob- 
beries gave an air of interesting danger. Then he told me 
how, years ago, when he drove the stage over to Boise City 
from the Union Pacific Line, he had on one trip a single 
passenger only, a little tenderfoot of a New England 
schoolma'am going to take charge of a school in that 
town. She had never before been further from Boston 
than the Hudson River. Along about dusk one evening, 
as she sat on the box, the driver and the team wound its 
way around the shoulder of a bleak mountain, a man 
suddenly stepped into the middle of the road and held 
up his hand. A cocked rifle rested easily in the hollow 
of his arm, and its muzzle pointed straight at the driver's 
head. He quickly pulled up, since, as he assured me, a 
" Winchester at ten paces is about as certain death as 
prussic acid." 

T 273 



274 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

" Throw over the express box," said the man with the 
gun. 

The driver reached down and flung the box in the 
road ; then he started to gather up the reins. 

" Hold on," the other cried impatiently. " Where's 
the mail bag } Don't you think I want that } " 

For reply the driver swiftly kicked it overboard. 

" All right," said the man on the ground in an affable 
tone. " You can drive on now." 

For half a mile they rolled along in silence, school- 
ma'am and driver. The former seemed to be in deep 
study. At last, turning to the driver, she said : 

" I don't know anything about the West, of course, but 
that certainly does seem to be an awfully lonesome place 
to have a post office." 

This maidenly innocence of the West has a counterpart 
to-day in the curious ignorance of the average Easterner 
about the true conditions in the West of his country. For 
the average Easterner, either fed upon Bret Harte's 
picturesque tales, looks upon the West as a realm of law- 
lessness and of poverty, except for the gamblers and 
successful miners, or he accepts the glamour and humorous 
exaggeration of its more recent literary exploitation, and 
believes that all Western farmers are plutocrats, their 
wives riding in automobiles and wearing diamonds, and 
that as soon as one crosses the Mississippi River one 
begins to stumble over nuggets the size of New England 
field rocks and scrape oneself on projecting veins of virgin 
silver. The possibility of farming within limitations and 
to the tune of a steady income seems curiously without 
the Eastern conception of the West. 

Amusing to the Westerner is this ignorance concerning 
the West's actual condition. A few weeks before Christmas 
a Dakota wife, recently married, received from her 
husband's sister in Massachusetts a letter asking for a list 
of things they needed, such as potatoes, cabbage, flour, and 



THE WEST AT HOME 275 

necessities to keep them through the winter. " Let me 
know, and we will send them," it added, " and try to 
arrange it so that John's feelings may not be hurt. We 
do not want you to suffer." 

A sheet of paper, stamp, and envelope were enclosed. 

The young wife replied on her husband's printed stationery, 

saying that they were indeed in sore need ; they were then 

living in a miserable shack that cost only £'joo ; she did 

not have anything better than Brussels carpet to put on 

the floors ; their barn was a cramped affair of only 40 

by 100 feet, scarcely large enough to shelter the ten 

horses and three vehicles they had left. She told piteously 

how she had no other means of reaching town than in a 

rubber- tired buggy ; the best she had to wear was a dress 

that cost the pitiful sum of 8s. a yard, and an old fur coat 

I that she bought for £1^. She hoped they would open 

I their hearts and assist quickly. The sister in Boston was 

I not without appreciation. She sent a diamond bracelet, 

j with the hope that it would add to the warmth of the 

I coat. 

Again, a well-known New York writer— the kind of a 
man to whom it would be difficult to mention a street in 
Whitechapel or an out-of-the-way village in Europe and 
not find that he knew the very bricks, or beer, thereof — was 
introduced a few months ago to a Kansas woman, and 
learned that she resides in a town of less than two thousand 
population, nearly two hundred miles west of the Missouri 
River. After her return home, he sent her " A Tale of 
Two Cities" and Browning's poems, with the hope that 
she would find " solace therein for her isolation," evidently 
commiserating her sad fate. It happens that her dwelling 
is furnace-heated, lighted with electricity, equipped with 
hot and cold water ; that she belongs to three clubs ; has 
a library of several hundred well-selected books ; rides in 
her own motor-car ; and has travelled almost as extensively 
as this Eastern man, who, as she says, has the typical 



276 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Eastern attitude toward the Westerner embodied in the 
couplet — 

" Of course you can't be like us, 
But be as like us as it's possible to be." 

The Westerner, as a rule, knows more about the East, 
but he is just as convinced, and more so, that his part of 
the country is the best part ; the only part where " things 
are done." I like a Westerner's definition when taxed by 
a foreigner for the exact boundaries of America's West. 
" The West isn't so much geography," he said. " It's a 
state of mind. The West is where a man is and hustles ; 
the East is where his father came from." 

You can tell a Westerner sometimes by his speech, as 
you can a Southerner, but always by his attitude toward 
life, and his boast of the part of the country he hails from. 
It's a part of our innocent provincialism, and so long as 
our Fourth of July orators talk perfervidly about "the 
oneness of America," and the crowds cheer and forget for 
the time that their post-office address is not just "The 
United States, care of Uncle Sam," what difference does 
it make if the South hurls " Yank " at the North, or the 
West shouts " effete " at the East, between whiles, and if 
the idea of the West's red shirt and prairie desolation dies 
hard in the East ? 

In the Senate wing of the Capitol in Washington there 
is a great mural canvas bearing the legend : " Westward 
the course of Empire takes its way." It is a picture of a 
pioneer caravan, the "prairie schooner" (a sort of gipsy 
van, but canvas covered), packed with household things, 
drawn by lean, over-worked horses, and the father and 
older boy scouting with gun in hand ; the mother on the 
driver's seat in the shadow of the wagon's tent with an 
infant clasped to her breast ; and everywhere beyond, the 
dreary prairie. The artist has tried to paint hope in the 
faces of the travellers ; but there was only commiseration 



THE WEST AT HOME 277 

in the horrified scrutiny of a lady from rural New England 
who came upon it in her first visit to Washington not long 
ago. "My cousin took his family away out West," she 
gasped. " Think of Etta and the girls having to live like 
that." 

[ In a recent trip through the West I had chanced to 
meet this cousin, and this is what had in reality befallen 
I him. After selling out a small business for which he was 
in debt in the tiny New England hamlet, where neither 
population nor the number of the houses nor the con- 
veniences therein had increased for nearly a century, the 
cousin had just enough money to get out to a Western 
I town, where he secured a position in a store supplying 
] farm implements. The family knew no one in the town, 
I and when they landed, weary from the hundreds of miles 
I of train-travel, they saw no dwellings that had been homes 
j for generations, with soft-toned, weather-beaten shingles, 
such had covered the picturesque, gone-to-seed homestead 
of their New England village, but instead newly con- 
structed architectural monstrosities, Corinthian columns 
joining fret-saw railings, pagoda and Queen Anne gables 
touching elbows, and the still more characteristic frontier 
construction of rows of brightly painted, square-front little 
frame houses as alike as a bunch of theatre tickets. In 
two days the transplanted New Englanders were stalled 
in one of the latter, which was furnished with bath and 
toilet facilities and electric lights. They bought, on the 
1 instalment plan, some furniture of the usual florid type 
sold in small towns East and West, and the local paper 
announced that they would be "a valuable addition to 
the social and business life of this hustling metropolis." 
There were two girls and a boy besides the father and 
mother, and on the third day after their arrival the father 
became a member of the commercial club and the girls 
were invited to a party. In a week the mother's name 
was proposed for membership in a woman's club, and the 



278 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

boy had joined the high school ball-team, and the whole 
family were an integral part of the community. It was 
the typical Western attitude toward new-comers, indicative 
of the hearty comradeship marking a plains community. 
Nowhere else in the world is there such extraordinary 
friendliness toward the stranger. In three months the 
father was running for councilman, and he and his family 
were practically as much a part of the town as if they had 
come in with those who, a few years before, staked out 
the original town site. At the end of a year the local 
paper announced that the head of this farm implement 
business had decided to go " where a bigger world can be 
seen " ; in other words, to establish a new store in a larger 
town, and that the New England man would be his successor 
in " the emporium on our hustling little Main Street." / 

Of all this success I had the pleasure of assuring the 
maiden New England relative, and of adding the proba- 
bility that her now Western cousin would be sent to 
Congress in the near future, and come to look at this 
picture of the early pioneer into the West as an extinct 
species. He hadn't written anything of his circumstances 
or success to his relatives back in the East simply because 
he had so far imbibed the Western spirit of hustle that he 
hadn't had the time to write. 

It is a popular tradition in the East that all Westerners 
are longing for a return to their ancestral home in the 
East, but the only case of really pining for the old home 
I ever heard of was an old lady who had been taken West 
very late in life, and who used to go out and sit in the 
midst of a prairie with her eyes closed, because the smell 
of the loam there revived in her homesick heart the scent 
of the old wharf on her seaport New England town. 

But to return to the adopted Western cousin. He had 
not gone West by "prairie schooner," because the paths 
of the pioneer have widened into broad highways of rail, 
and the " tourist sleeper " — a cane-seated edition of the 



THE WEST AT HOME 279 

Pullman car — makes railroad travel on these long trips 
across the continent fairly comfortable and within the 
moderate purse. Like the Pullman, it has the long public 
aisle down the centre, flanked by the sections to be con- 
verted into sleeping-berths. But the seats are covered 
with rattan instead of the plush upholstery, and instead 
of calls to the dining-car the railroad company provides 
removable tables on which the traveller spreads the food 
he has brought with him, and there is a stove at the end 
of each car on which coffee and tea may be made and 
soup warmed ; for " going tourist " means lunch-baskets 
great or small, but large enough to last all the long days 
and nights of the trip. It is a sort of picnic on wheels three 
times a day. It would do a baker good to see the assortment 
of cakes, pies, and tarts; a butcher would wear a broad smile 
at the hams and joints, and a delicatessen man would think 
he was at home in his own shop with the cheese, noodles, 
wurst, and tinned things innumerable. There is, on the 
whole, a cook's nightmare of cold chicken, radishes, 
kippered herrings, apples, chocolate drops, coffee-pots, 
tin pans, repeated with variations three times a day. I 
once saw a German woman, travelling with five fiaxen- 
haired children, open a market-basket and set forth head 
cheese, sauerkraut, tinned gooseberries, a large cake with 
white frosting, a tin of baked beans, and two loaves of 
bread. She had been out two days, and goodness only 
knows how much more plunder she had in her hamper. 
But on the same train there was a stoical Japanese, who 
nibbled once or twice a day at something he had in a 
small brown paper package, and four days and nights 
was he to be on this train, for he had started in at New 
York. 

On these trips through the West everybody becomes 
acquainted more or less. It is as if you went out on any 
busy street in a large American city (only an American 
city could give the racial variety), and, selecting the first 



28o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

fifty men, women, and children you chanced to meet, 
packed them off on short notice on a 3500 mile trip, 
and told them to bring all their food, and their bird- 
cages, their white mice, their cats, their pet squirrels, 
and, if so minded, their bandboxes, and, of course, their 
banjos, their guitars, their mouth-organs, or what 
they pleased to while away the time; and so whirling 
over the alkali plains, through tunnels and over steep 
grades, with landscape varying from an apparently end- 
less expanse of " sage brush " (furze-like shrub), and 
prairie dogs (democracy's ermine) peering from their 
ground labyrinths, to a bird's-eye view of a real city, 
they read, flirt, argue, chat, laugh, and sing as the mood 
comes. 

One summer, during a delay at a way station on a 
Northern trans-continental route, I left the Pullman where 
nervous, fidgety travellers were sitting beneath electric 
fans, watches in hand, and denouncing the company for 
not keeping its printed schedules to the second, and I 
walked down the platform to the ''tourist" end of the 
train. The thermometer on the little eating-shack beside 
the ticket agent's window registered 117°, and far out 
over the prairie the heat danced in gaseous riot, but from 
a tourist car came unmistakable sounds of mirth. I peeped 
within. A sheep ranchman from Idaho and a real estate 
broker from San Francisco were telling stories — pistol 
stories, poker stories, stories of *' Calamity Jane," "Broncho 
Liz," and other Western characters, and their fellow- 
travellers were grouped about listening breathlessly or 
applauding. Suddenly a deep Teutonic bass started a 
song, and the car took up the chorus with a will ; evidently 
it had been in stock rehearsal during the trip. 

" Oh, my German brudder, 
Come and have a drink with me, with me," 

The spirit of the West, the stimulus to fellowship, the 



THE WEST AT HOME 281 

indifference to adverse physical conditions, had already 
gripped that earful. Of course no Englishman could 
have tolerated this promiscuity and impromptu friendli- 
ness ; but I give you my word, to an American those 
rattan seats looked more inviting, and the picturesque 
qualities of the " tourist traveller " seemed to fit in better 
with the primitive landscape, than the plush and mahogany 
1 and discontent of the passengers I had left, who were 
enduring in the Pullman car what an American humorist 
has called, " America's best effort of purveying exclusive- 
ness to the masses." 

; But again, on a Southern railroad line, over which the 
! afflicted seeking our South-western tubercular resorts 
travel, I have looked in a ** tourist " to find tragic sights 
I that rival Zola's picture of the cure-seekers to Lourdes, 
i while below the "tourist" is the "immigrant sleeper/* 
', where Uncle Sam's embryo citizens are whirled across 
I to the West, and here, in wooden seats, there is herding 
I little better than our accommodation for transporting live 
I stock. 

The trans-continental lines all have immigration 
bureaus for placing these foreigners in small farm holdings 
along their tracks, and many of these settlements composed 
of foreign peasantry, literally dumped from the immigrant 
stations on the East coast on to the Western plains, have 
prospered amazingly. Individuals have gained wealth and 
I risen to political importance. We have a United States 
senator from the West who was shipped out there years 
ago, an immigrant youth with a pack on his back and 
nothing in his pockets ; and the recent most popular 
governor of a Western state was the son of immigrant 
parents who had been sent West direct from landing at 
Ellis Island. 

It is unusual to hear the word " farm " in the West ; it 
is spelt " ranch " out there. All agriculture is " ranching," 
and a ranch may be anything from the 160 acres of the 



282 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

" quarter section " — as the Government land is parcelled out 
in the great rushes for free homes which Uncle Sam's 
officials have more or less honestly superintended — to three 
hundred square miles of wheat fields and cattle ranges. 
There is a " ranch " in Texas like a small principality with 
a town and outlying settlement upon it, and another Texas 
ranch is as large as the state of Rhode Island. It is fifty 
miles from the front porch to the front gate, and a railroad 
runs through it for more than a hundred miles. This ranch 
belongs to a woman. In California there is a ranch so large 
that it can spare 38,000 acres for an artificial lake. One 
field of alfalfa (grass not unlike pink clover) is a thousand 
acres of waving green and yields 5000 tons of hay a year. 
The wheat on this ranch is grown on such a scale that only 
leading-machines (veritable Juggernauts as large as the 
most powerful locomotive, that cut, bind, and stack the 
grain as it moves over the field) are practicable for its 
harvesting. It is so far from the kitchen to the outer 
limits of the field that a dining-car drawn by six horses is 
a part of the harvesting equipment. But a farm-house 
with a few acres of fruit trees is also a ranch ; and so is a 
" soddy " — no one says " sod house " in the real West — with 
hen-coop capacity for some dozen fowls and an incubator ; 
and one man in Texas has erected a sort of stockade in 
which he hoards snakes to gather the poison, and this is 
known as a "rattle-snake ranch." In fact, there is an 
infinite variety of ranches, and " ranch " is about the first 
word the foreign settler learns. They tell the story of an 
automobilist who, having disabled his car and broken the 
most valuable implement of repair, tramped across country 
to a solitary house on the horizon. The owner he 
recognized as a Scandinavian, and, without wasting words 
he queried, " Monkey wrench ? " 

" Na, dis ben no monkey ranch," replied the host. " Dis 
ben apple ranch. Ma brudder, he hav sheep ranch. Neigh- 
bour Oslen " (any one within fifty miles is " neighbour ") 



THE WEST AT HOME 28 



**he hav cattle ranch. But I never hear of monkey ranch 
dese part. I tank too cold for dose," he vouchsafed 
amiably. 

Perhaps the view our Easterners share with foreigners 
that the Western farmers are all plutocrats is not without 
foundation, for some of the enormous ranches make the 
farms in the rest of the world look like little experimental 
plots of an agricultural school ; and certainly, as one 
Westerner remarked, in looking over a pastoral scene on 
an English estate, '' Compared with baleing hay on a 
California ranch this looks like harvesting by the spoonful 
and feeding it to the cattle with a medicine dropper." 

Beneath the Westerner's boasting — which is, of course, 
a marked and natural characteristic of self-reliant and 
resourceful men who have " made two blades of grass 
grow where one grew before '" without letting any grow 
under their feet — there is truth. The alfalfa with its three 
annual crops grows to the sound of six-footed verse, and is 
symbolic of the gigantic achievement possible in the West. 

If all the milk cows and cattle of the Western lands 
could be placed one behind another, they would extend for 
a distance of over two million miles ; the line of horses and 
mules would be even longer ; and this means that certain 
men have indeed made enormous fortunes out of the product 
of sunshine, rain, black soil, and hard work ; that certain 
wives — farmers' wives — have oriental carpets throughout 
their entire isolated homesteads, have wonderful organs 
built in and the latest model of motor car, have electric 
lights — the dynamo being run by a gasolene engine — and 
are clothed exactly like the wealthy women in the East, 
who, in fact, travel more than the Eastern woman, and are 
more of the bigger world in spirit. But most of these 
Western women have hard lines in their faces, put there in 
the struggle of fiercer pioneer times, and their present 
luxury of home surrounding and travel is exceptional 
among their sisters in the West to-day. 



284 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

The average ranchwoman — the woman living usually 
in a five-room cabin of logs plastered together with yellow 
mud, set down in the rolling prairie as it were without the 
relieving graciousness of vine or shrub, with only a small 
amount of shade of her husband's planting, and while 
having an abundance of stores, and all the comfortable 
clothing possible — must sturdily and merrily work out the 
household problem in independence of ice-boxes, gas- 
ranges, milkmen, delicatessens, confectioners, fruiterers, 
and — in utter loneliness ; for with the men in the field, 
she must, day after day, face hours alone, with everywhere 
only the strange, moving, thrilling silence — that mysterious, 
awful silence of our Western plains. 

The Eastern woman who commiserates them as 
materially poor is no more mistaken than the writer who 
heaps encomium, generally poetic, upon the " pioneers who 
go out into the wilderness and whose brawny arms have 
transformed dark forests into sunny and smiling farms," and 
does not mention the women who lived in the sod houses 
and kept courage in the awful solitude of a Western 
prairie, and remained cheerful and even interesting. 

It is very hard to reconcile a foreign mind to the 
mixture of primitive conditions and advanced civilization 
of which life in a " soddy " or log-ranch house consists. 
Twenty miles from a store or post office, there will 
generally be a telephone connection (the farmers set the 
poles and put on the wires) with everybody in the county ; 
letters and magazines are delivered at the gate by the 
federal official, whose rural free delivery route crosses the 
plains ; there is almost always a parlour organ or a piano 
and a phonograph — one firm sold three hundred phono- 
graphs to small ranches in one season — and yet there is 
not a servant to be had (the servant problem three hundred 
miles west of the Mississippi River makes the situation in 
New York City look like life beneath the bread-fruit tree), 
and the wife must cook for all the help her husband is able 



THE WEST AT HOME 285 

to employ on the ranch. There is, of course, no water piped 
to the house, and to do the washing even for a " flannel- 
shirt " mMage under these conditions supplies all the 
strenuosity of a course in a flesh reduction sanatorium, and 
it is a continuous performance of a lifetime for these 
women. Then in sickness — miles from a physician, 
trained nurses unobtainable, conveniences in the sick-room 
that depend upon a near-by chemist lacking — these make 
suffering hard. And if the end come, the little cemetery 
on the open prairie is so desolate. 

Yet these little graves in Western cemeteries make a 
new tie for those to whom they are a shrine. The transient 
air which once gave these scattered settlements an effect 
of gypsying rather than homestead is forsaking the West. 
Some of the houses now have a grove of trees about them, 
and, as a Montana ranchwoman said : " Then you know 
they are going to stay." A new-comer may build a cabin 
or plough a field or dig a well or a ditch to water his 
garden and still not be a rooted Westerner, for the ripening 
of seed is a matter of one summer, but the planting of a 
tree which is more than the age of a man is considered the 
seal of permanency to the prairie ranchwoman. 

I don't know of any way to describe the ranchwoman 
as well as the popular endorsement that she is " awfully 
good sort." One of them, though I knew she worked very 
hard and constantly in the little shack they called home on 
her husband's cattle-ranch, remarked that " all you have to 
do is to live and watch the cattle put on flesh and count 
the dollars." Another told as a joke that, early in their 
married life, having a Yankee for a husband, she thought 
to surprise him with a dish of cod-fish, which is supposed 
to be the terrapin and truffles of the New Englander's 
palate. Eagerly she watched for the return of the bi- 
weekly coach that carried the mails and, she hoped, her 
grocery order. Instead it brought her this letter : — 

" Dear Madam : Being out of cod-fish, we take the 



286 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

liberty of sending you a sample of our new stove polish. 
Hoping it will meet with your approval, we are, etc., 
etc. . . ." 

Ranchwomen are as a rule intelligent and interested 
partners in their husbands* enterprise. One I know was 
entertaining a party of Eastern people in her home when one 
night a bulletin of an approaching cold wave was handed her 
by one of the ranchmen. Her husband was away, and it 
was spring and all their fruit trees were in bud. Without a 
moment's hesitation she went out and, in her dinner dress, 
superintended the placing of innumerable " smudges " (pots 
containing smothered coal-fire) through the great orchards 
of their ranch. Her generalship of this open-air heating, 
which is Colorado and California's method of first aid to 
the frost-threatened, saved seventy-five per cent, of a crop 
valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have some- 
times wished that our Eastern women who conclude that 
because gloves are cheaper in Paris, American civilization 
is a failure, might study the ranchwoman instead of the 
bargain counter. 

Accustomed to the Eastern farmer who gets his food 
supplies from his farm, sells a limited amount in the local 
market, and handles £60 or £yo cash in a prosperous year, 
the Western ranch, with its large crops, the ranchowner 
keeping close tab on the Chicago Board of Trade and 
buying the latest and best machinery, and the immense 
profit when crops are sold to advantage out there, was a 
revelation to me, just as was the store-room that a ranch 
house-wife in a modest home opened for my inspection. 
It was a veritable grocery store, all the staple groceries 
being ordered annually from St. Paul or Chicago, and there 
was everything imaginable from tinned frankfurters to 
salted almonds. 

Americans are beginning to realize that there is a divine 
prescience in the arrangement of American topography for 
play, for rest and recreation, as there is in its familiar 



THE WEST AT HOME 287 

adaptation to commercial purposes, and more and more 
summer travel sends its tide into the West. Indeed, the 
running of ranches as health retreats or summer resorts is 
becoming a very profitable feature of life in the West. The 
owners of these ranches get out prospectuses like! the sea- 
shore hotel leaflet, assuring you of all the comfort under 
, heaven, and still they are very assidious in preserving the 
I picturesque effect of the crudeness of early frontier life. 
For the Easterner wants to find the cowboys dressed as 
, they do on the stage, and wants to boast on his return to 
the East that he has been " roughing it." So there are the 
[ best hair mattresses and springs but rough-hewn log bed- 
j steads, and the men about the place wear elaborate 
I " chaps " (leather breeches with the outer seams decorated 
' with slashed leather fringe) and most ostentatious spurs, 
( and the perennial " six-shooter " protruding from a rear 
I pocket with calculated carelessness. 

I As a fact much of the picturesqueness of costume as of 
j custom in the West has ceased to exist. In the days 
I when the settlement of the West was a raid and not a 
* migration, when the settlers were generally men who had 
been " crowded out of the herd " in the East either for 
j knavery or because they had a warp in their natures and 
I had ceased to fit in with the specifications of civilization, it 
jwas womanless society for the most part, and vigorous 
I individuality held sway so prominently as to justify, no 
I doubt in spots, the lurid literature written with feigned 
wisdom and unfeigned sensationalism and on which foreign 
judgment of the West is still based. 

As some one has said, towns in the West at the time 
were " eddies in the troubled stream of Western immigra- 
[tion catching odd bits of driftwood and wreck, the flotsam 
and jetsam of a chaotic flood," and of course some of the 
characters from these " cow towns," are still outside of 
jgrave and jail. I know one " prominent citizen " who is 
[a gambler, farmer, fighter, and school teacher, while I have 



a 



288 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

seen on a shopkeeper's window the inscription, "Wall 
Paper and Marriage Licences" — two commodities, for 
which, to be entirely frank, there seemed to be slight 
demand in that particular community. But such things 
can no more fairly be called typically American than the 
most simian of New Yorkers, whose consuming love of 
London society has been acquired by observing other 
Americans imitate English manners in the dining-rooms 
of the Savoy or Claridge's. 

And any one who imagines that he will find, every time 
his train stops in his progress through the West, a board 
walk between the railroad station and a saloon lined with 
faro-tables presided over by ladies with golden curls, red 
cheeks, and pink " Mother Hubbards," or who expects to 
find Western towns still a mixture of cowboys, half-breeds, 
gamblers, teamsters, freighters, and dissipated professional 
men, with the coroner idly sauntering forth at breath of 
quarrel, and the sheriff an interested spectator at the 
" shooting-up " of a saloon, and with the usual order of a 
cowboy entering the eating-house for " a hundred dollars 
worth of ham and eggs " — is destined to disappointment. 

The " bad men " of the West were as picturesque, often 
as criminally inclined, as the wildest fugitive from justice in 
the African "bush"; but they generally turned into brave 
men, since courage is much a matter of association and 
comes partly from habit and after association with scenes 
of danger and violence, and their elimination has been as 
much a matter of economic development as of police 
regulation. The unrestrained freedom of the dance hall 
in the far West where the cowboys came from fifty miles 
about, and where a Mexican washerwoman was liable to 
be the belle of the ball, and the scarce lady partners 
shared the liquid refreshment of their partners until there 
arose jealousies, heart-burning, now and then a killing, and 
some marriages : this was, nevertheless, far from the un- 
restrained liberty of the beer cellar in Bohemian circles ; 



THE WEST AT HOME 289 

it was the advance guard, not the degeneration of a 
national type. 

Bad men and women always go in the early trains to 

a new country ; but if the country is worth while, men of 

character and achievement go after them and send the 

others to their holes. Between the Western type in 

America to-day and the early Western type there is the 

; distinction between the man who moves with his family 

' to a new home and the man who goes out alone in the 

excitement of a new discovery of gold or silver to get his 

share and to bring it back, or the man and woman 

, who go out after the hunters after gold to hunt them in 

; turn for whatever gold they may find. The day of the 

I "pioneers" has gone by in most of the Far Western 

' country. The men who do the American country good 

; are the same in the Far West and in the Middle-west as 

( in the East, and there is nothing, it seems to me, more 

' interesting in the world of modern effort than the solid 

I achievement of the men who are now building up the 

^ West — who are really making the empire west of the 

; Mississippi. 

J For instance, as a relic of the men who went first to 
j our Western mines, you still find the prospector type 
abroad, clad in typical boots, jeans, buckskin, gun, blanket- 
1 roll and tools, and aggressively urgent that you let him 
lead you to " the richest pocket (lode) in the world " ; but 
he is sporadic. The real Western miner leads a life as 
unspectacular as the miner in any well-organized mineral 
deposit district in the world. He goes up to work in an 
electric car, descends the mine in an electric hoist, works 
by electric light, drills with electric air-compressers, fires 
his shot by electricity from an electric switchboard, remote 
from the scene of his labours. Of course there are strikes, 
and occasionally the state militia will be called out to 
quell a riot ; but this also takes place in mines as near the 
Eastern coast as the few historic mine disturbances have 



290 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

been near the Western. The average miner in the West 
is receiving about ;£^i6 or ;^20 a month, lives in a comfort- 
able house with his family, and his children are educated 
in a high school, sometimes even going to the state 
university. 

The rough mining "camps" have in many instances 
been turned into well-organized cities. For instance, 
those who have fed their imagination on Bret Harte's 
" The Luck of Roaring Camp," are surprised to find 
Leadville, Ouray, Butte, etc., well-built, well-paved, 
adequately lighted cities. The blue-shirted individual, 
" pickers " on a ** bonanza strike " are now replaced by an 
immense vista of steel-gallows frames, smoke stacks and 
concentrators. 

A few years ago a party of tourists visited one of 
the newest mining towns where things were still rather 
raw and sensational developments might be expected. 
Suddenly on the Main Street there appeared an excited 
youth brandishing two six-shooters, a well-developed case 
of running amuck. The street cleared before his charge, the 
tourists flattening themselves against a wall, and at least 
one member of the party was frightened within an inch 
of her life I know, because I was that member, and all 
subsequently confessed to a sudden loss of interest in the 
excitement and picturesqueness which as tourists they had 
been disappointed in not finding. But a woman of good 
square shoulders and determined mien walked out of a 
store and briskly up to the youth, took away his pistols, 
boxed his ears, remarking : " Now, Jack, you little fool, I 
don't want no more of this. You go down to the house 
and go to bed at once, and don't you come out till you 
get plumb sober. Go on now." 

No Cockney matron could have removed her man 
from the " pub " with more dignity and aplomb. 

When a visiting foreigner says that our West is more 
interesting than the East because it is " more American," 



THE WEST AT HOME 291 

I am more than suspicious that it is the crudities that 
have been seized upon as typically American, without 
realizing that crudity is a characteristic of certain classes 
even in older civilizations, and that in the West of America 
things are moving so rapidly that one can hardly find a 
state of society sufficiently settled to furnish definite type. 
How a man comes out in the West is the problem of 
\ his own nature, not a matter of fitting into an accepted 
mould, high or low. He may become a cattle thief or a 
steady " puncher " (gatherer of wild cattle) ; he may take 
' to liquor and gambhng or he may become a politician or 
, a maker of politicians ; he may pose as a typical cowboy 
! nuisance, wear queer clothes, shoot off pistols and strange 
I oaths to frighten tenderfeet (new-comers from the East) ; 
] or he may become a real ranchman — "a builder up of 
empire," to use one of our newest phrases — but whatever 
'1 of whim or evil certain individuals may still display, the 
I tendency of every Western community is toward respecta- 
I bility, which in a new country means the ability to inspire 
^ respect in others by respecting oneself. But far from 
; reaching the apotheosis of American type and life in the 
I unconventionality of the Far West, this must be regarded 
I as the most transitional phase of the nation, where the 
I individualism of big traits, of personal administration of 
I justice and of crude manners (of necessity the marks of 
j frontier life), are changing into a strong loyalty and respect 
I for the community and an appreciation that, however irk- 
some and apparently arbitrary and meaningless the artificial 
conventions of what the Westerner calls " polite society " 
may appear, it is great deal better for the community and 
for the individual that they be observed. Some one has 
said, "There is no stickler for etiquette like a Western 
community that has recently got manners." 

This sometimes leads to extreme sensitiveness on the 
finer points. A statesman from the East was recently 
called upon to be the orator of the opening day of an 



292 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

exposition in the North-west. The day was extremely 
hot, and the outdoor platform on which the distinguished 
guests were placed was covered with a white awning 
which accentuated the glare. At the close of his oration, 
the Eastern statesman felt constrained to put his hand in 
the pitcher of iced water which stood on a table at his side, 
and, removing a piece of the ice, he applied it to his fore- 
head and the back of his neck. In the East the act would 
have been condoned on the score of an emergency measure 
and the prerogative of distinguished statesmanship, but 
not so in this Western city. Criticism was rampant. The 
wife of the mayor of the city left the platform in high 
dudgeon over the offence offered to the society lights of 
her city, and the leading newspaper gave a full and 
sensationally illustrated page to " the statesmen from 
the East who think any manners good enough for the 
West." 

And this community loyalty and jealousy and pride — the 
paper of one small town will take delight in referring to a 
neighbour as "that one-eyed, sheep-camp of a foot-hills 
village " — has produced a broader psychological effect on 
the West in emphasizing that sectional love and pride in 
their newer part of America which has been, and is 
growing to be, still more a matter for political reckoning. 
The West no longer welcomes the demagogue and the 
spell-binder from the East to expound the political 
situation and get their vote. The Western farmer is apt 
to understand the situation as well as the Eastern politician 
who used to come West to thunder his well-worn arguments 
in their school houses. The demagogue is not eliminated — 
like the poor he is always with us in American politics — 
but as an element to sway Western opinion to conformity 
with Eastern views, he is tamed and timid compared with 
other years. The Westerner is doing his own political 
reasoning, and he has an eye out that legislation in 
Washington takes full account of the tribute due that 



THE WEST AT HOME 293 

western half of the country to which he offers an en- 
thusiastically voiced devotion such as you find in no other 
part of patriotic America. 

In a recent campaign, a famous Eastern Congressman 
came to the prairie states to assist in influencing the 
voters. At one of the stations a group of farmers stood 
on the street discussing the event. 

I " Mighty fine car on the track," remarked one. *' The 
railroad president in town ? " 

" No ; the Congressman came out in that — to make 
speeches to us ! " 

The farmers laughed, and it was predicted that the 
' private car would defeat the ticket for which the Congress- 
I man was talking. It did not ; indeed, there was little 
I appreciable effect one way or the other from his visit. But 
it is remarked that the Westerner is each year less inclined 
I to be stampeded in his politics. 

As significant of woman's position in the West, it is 
1 to be noted that the two states giving entire suffrage to 
I women are west of the Mississippi, and that most of the 



/ states giving partial suffrage are Western states. 

I At present there is no poverty, in the usual acceptance 

I of the word, in the West. Conditions may be rough, but 

I this empire — a vast expanse of grain field, orchard, and 

I pasture, wherein there are no "bread lines," no fresh air 

1 funds, and little charity work is necessary — offers a broad, 

I generously shared property to every one willing to labour. 

Across its eastern border are pouring hundreds of 

thousands of immigrants every season ; home-seekers' trains 

have been crowded every month for five years ; towns 

show new roofs. Ranches are being broken up into farms ; 

settlement is getting close. Little wonder that the bigness 

] of it all astounds the visitor, who has been taught to 

I consider the West in a most elementary state of develop- 

] ment. Of course there is still throughout the West the 

pathetic, even tragic, evidences of certain early failures. 



294 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Empty sad houses are plenty, school-houses have no 
occupants, cattle are stabled in what were once shop- 
buildings, and whole town sites are deserted. Where 
towns of boom settlement sought electric lights, water- 
works, and street improvement that were out of proportion 
to their ability and size, there has been a reaction, with 
the necessity of discharging the bonded indebtedness of 
boom days, and in one or two instances curious property 
conditions have ensued. I know of several court houses 
that, through the process of mechanics' liens, and other 
legal processes, have come to be owned by individuals who 
have been puzzled to know what to do with them, and 
one Boston investor owns a college out on the plains — he 
took it with the foreclosure of a mortgage ; while in a 
town in western Kansas there is the situation of a house 
costing ;^4000, and scarcely enough available funds to buy 
a load of wood, with a handsome fireplace in every office. 

But almost every thriving city of the West has passed 
through three stages of development before attaining a 
state of permanent prosperity : the settlement at high 
pressure, the period of extravagance, followed by the 
depression of the inevitable "slump." 

These transitory phases give rise to a variety in the 
individual experiences that has done much to make the 
heroic optimism in the character of the typical Western 
woman. 

Back in the nineties, I was in a North-western city, 
which had reached the depths of bankruptcy. It was 
worse than a deserted city, for bankrupt people moved 
shabbily about the shell of their former magnificence. 
Even from the water front the boarded-up hotel and the 
neglected residences told the mournful tale of a collapsed 
boom more graphically than the column account in the 
Eastern newspapers had done. The men sat about the 
Chamber of Commerce and bet millions to cheer each 
other up, knowing that no one of them had a cent. The 



THE WEST AT HOME 295 

wife of a " prominent citizen," to whom I had a letter, 
called on me. She was dressed in faded, pretty nearly 
ragged finery, but she had a smile that must have done 
long service, and still had not worn to an edge. 

" Look pretty, don't I ?" she exclaimed. " Well, it will be 
better luck next time. As soon as the men get over being 
stunned, we've just got to begin over and work the city up 
again. Why, it's the greatest harbour possible." And there 
followed a most enthusiastic description of the crumbling 
city's charms and advantages. She must have seen my 
amazed admiration. 

" Well, we haven't money enough to pay our car fare 
out of town, so we'll just have to stick and work," she 
ended. 

As it happened, very shortly after this interview 
Eastern capital was induced to come to her city, and, once 
started, its natural advantages and the " hustle " of its 
people rescued it, and made of it one of the most thriving 
towns in its exceedingly prosperous Western state. The 
\ " prominent citizen " has come to Washington as senator, 
and is known as one of the wealthiest men in the Senate. 
Last season I met the wife again. The smile was no less 
cordial, no lest winning. " Wasn't it good we couldn't 
get out of town that time ? " she said, with simple 
sincerity. 

j Yet for all the resources of the West and the specta- 

I cular rise of fortune for the individual, not for years will 
I the West approximate the comfort and wealth of the 
East. A single bank in New York City has larger 
deposits than the combined banks of a Mid-west state. 
It takes decades to grow parks and forests ; it requires 
time to develop lineage ; and the history of the average 
Western community began day before yesterday, compared 
with that of "back East" villages. As regards society 
in the West, it is difficult to confine comment on that 
within the bounds of uncontradictory adjectives. Certain 



296 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

it is that democracy is more real, more impressive there to 
those who like democracy, but it may be more oppressive 
to those who do not. Professional society people do not 
exist in the West, and the average man and woman have 
not had time to enter the primrose paths of literary and 
artistic dalliance. The collection of the precious things of 
the mind or of the hand of the artist is still considered a 
trifle eccentric. There is a freedom of manners and a 
lack of social distinction. There is no snobbishness, and 
less laugh at " the arrogant strut of new wealth " than at a 
claim of privilege of high birth ; but this is not unnatural, 
since the time is not remote when the query, " What was 
your name back in the states ? " was a killing offence, and 
the former taint means but pride in one's accomplishment, 
and business and enterprise fill the normally blue atmo- 
sphere of the West. The East sniffs at the West, socially 
considered. Every noisy young woman is set down as 
** typically Western." She does talk with much r-burring 
and twanging, but the Yankee has the nasal note in her 
enunciation. The Southerner's conversation " gets there by 
freight," as the expression is, and even the most approved 
British sing-song inflection is a matter of taste. 

There is a certain breezy bearing about the young person 
from a Western state ; but that is because she has not been 
brought up in a community where there was a social pond 
turtle, nor the perpetual effort to discover whether the 
visitor knows "the right people," but, more than likely, 
has never been led to meditate upon a social distinction 
between herself, as the daughter of a judge, and the sons 
and daughters of the shopkeepers in the same town. As 
a matter of fact, the shopkeeper in a Western city is quite 
likely to be an alumnus of Yale, or even a *' remittance 
man " of long lineage in England who has, for various 
reasons (never questioned in a Western city), sought that 
part of the land where there are, proportionately speaking, 
fewer strivers and more numerous opportunities. So that 



THE WEST AT HOME 297 

in every way the West socially upsets all our calculations. 
In the Western cities I think I am right in saying that 
there is really a larger measure of refinement than is always 
to be found in similar circles among the further Eastern 
states, which is saying much or little, according as one is a 
critic or advocate of American society in general. 

But as to the future of culture in the West who can 
doubt ? One feels that a few generations and the resistless 
energy of the Westerner will develop several Madames de 
Stael. The echo of the historic reply of a Westerner to a 
questioner on this subject still rings confidently : " Culture," 
said he. " We haven't got to that yet, but when we do, we'll 
make culture hum." 

In short, the key-notes of character in the Western 
men and women might be fairly stated as stability, frank- 
ness, worth, and — a whole lot of conceit ! This has been 
variously spelt as " bombast," or " blague," by visiting 
foreigners. Yet, though it must be granted that this 
conceit of the American in the West is more flamboyant 
than that of the Oriental, more expressive than that of the 
English, more aggressive than that of the Frenchman — 
it has no more magnitude, and it is so based on justifying 
achievement, and so near akin to a broad patriotism, that 
even the Easterner of their continent is beginning to accept 
the Westerner's estimate of his part of the country as 
conservative, and, if the truth be told, to fear the West as a 
commercial and political rival. 

To any one fresh from older society, much that he 
meets from Chicago westward seems rude and inchoate ; 
but there is no provincialism like that which smiles at men 
and women determined to be idealistic ; and that, beyond 
all the material struggle, is what one feels throbbing in the 
optimism and the imagination to cope with ever larger 
areas and vaster combinations and problems of greater 
magnitude found in the West. 



(I 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 

FROM the earliest days of American history, New- 
England, its people, and the life of its people, have 
held a place in the forefront of American affairs ; 
and although Oliver Wendell Holmes's comment that 
" New England is a watershed which drains brains into 
all the rest of the country" may lack the comparative 
emphasis which it contained half a century ago, New 
England still produces a sufficient supply of that article to 
provide for her own needs, and some of her product in that 
line still trickles over her borders. 

About a third of the students at Harvard and Yale 
have come to those universities from the Middle and Far 
West, and, returning with them, go a good proportion of 
the Eastern students who, having completed the course in 
the scientific schools at Cambridge and New Haven, seek a 
practical application of their degree work in the resources 
of the West. This coaxing away of the sturdy and 
youthful muscle by the apparently limitless fat lands lying 
to the West, and the response to the siren-call of pioneer 
adventure and opportunity for fortune in the foot-hills and 
the frozen hord of Alaska, is supplemented by the calm 
transfer of capital by older heads to business in the South, 
to railroad enterprises across the continent, and to establish- 
ing industries wherever proximity to the source of the 

298 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 299 

raw material will admit the economy of manufacture over 
the same work amid New England's limited resources. 

So it comes that over all this broad land is scattered a 
people whose lineage, and quite as often whose memory, 
runs back to an old home in Maine, or Vermont, or Massa- 
chusetts ; and these people, while transplanted, are rarely 
alienated. Let a drama of New England be played in the 
West, and the houses will be packed with a " ready-made " 
constituency, the majority of whom know the play's lines 
well enough to recite the scenes backwards, but whose 
hearts are sent on a homeward journey by the old familiar 
Yankee settings. Let a company of strolling minstrels 
sing " The Old Oaken Bucket " in a Western settlement of 
any type, and the effect will be as electrical as the chanting 
of the " Marseillaise " in a boulevard cafe. For the New 
Englander who has gone West throws off the abiding 
pathos and reserve characteristic of the typical New 
Englander on his native heath, be he of high or low 
degree — of Boston or " Tebetts Cross road " — and becomes 
hot-blooded with the spirit of the newer, less tradition- 
bound conditions, and he stirs to the ballad of New England 
rural sentiment as he probably would not have done had 
he remained on her granitic soil. 

But what of the New Englander who has stayed and 
drawn his character from that granitic soil ? — of the New 
Englander of to-day ? 

Boston, popularly considered the epitome of New 
Englandism, is more like London than New York is. 
Architecturally, because the skyscrapers are still sporadic 
and the residences, even in the centre, show a diversity in 
their plain fronts. The commercial part suggests, too, a 
miniature London, and the social life knows distinctions 
that are more English than American. 

The Puritan forbear who thundered against the British 
nobility of his time as " blind, undistinguishing reproaches 
against mankind, divisions which nature had not made, 



300 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

neither pious nor benevolent, but pernicious as they are 
false," might or might not feel his volcanic sentiment 
assuaged could he view the exalted position accorded his 
descendants in the Boston social estimate to-day, because 
they are branches of the family tree his iconoclastic soul 
and his prolific Puritan spouse planted on the " bleak New 
England coast." 

Every foreigner is impressed with the republican 
aristocracy in Boston. But as an Englishman pointed out — 
not unfairly, it seemed to me — this aristocracy of birth only 
achieves recognition after some intermediate ancestor or 
the present generation has supported the claim with a 
comfortable, trade-made fortune. His hostess in the 
Back Bay District (Boston's Mayfair) whose husband had 
made his money through the invention of a shoe-machine, 
sitting amid her home's furnishings from palaces and 
collections all over Europe, had assured him that there was 
something noble about a pride of ancestry planted in 
poverty ; that whereas the creation of English baronets was 
a matter of paying King James ;^iooo each for the honour, 
American nobility consisted of pride in the character of 
poor pioneer ancestors, and the " culture " which had been 
applied to the later edition. 

" But whoever heard of a poor man in America receiving 
any social consideration because of a puritan ancestor ? " 
ended the Englishman. 

It was, of course, open to a retort on the recognized 
market value of aristocracy abroad ; also to a discussion 
of the question of the real character of the Puritan settlers 
as a source of boastful descent ; but being merely of New 
England fisher folk, I felt unauthorized to speak on either 
subject. However, the family life in Boston resembles the 
regime of an Enghsh household. A nursery governess is 
not an uncommon feature in even the fairly well-off house- 
hold, and the children's diet is not a matter of test for the 
survival of the toughest infantile stomach on an adult 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 301 

regime as it is in the average American family elsewhere. 
The Boston woman knows as much about housekeeping as 
the traditional " New England housekeeper," whose name 
stands for marvellous pies and scrupulous neatness through- 
out the country ; but the Boston woman has also the better 
executive hold over her home of the Englishwoman — the 
ability to have the servant, not the mistress, do the work 
— that is not found in the middle-class household elsewhere 
in America. 

Visitors from other parts of the country find something 
chilling about the Boston home, just as they do about the 
English ; but the comfort of a New England guest is un- 
deniable, and while, compared to the effusiveness of 
Southern and Western hospitality in the United States, the 
geniality of your Boston host may seem, like the Boston 
sunshine, always to have a trace of the north-east wind, 
as the affection of his Puritan forbears was chilled by the 
Labrador current of their theology, his children will not 
be permitted, nay encouraged, so that you may feel " per- 
fectly at home," to descend upon your bedroom still in 
their " nighties," and remain conversationally shrill and 
inquisitively fingering your belongings until, by much 
diplomacy, you escape with barely time and seclusion for 
your dressing ; and you will not be expected to seek, with 
the rest of the family, the^ one lavatory of the house to 
perform your ablutions, all of which is of ordinary occur- 
rence in the best-intentioned hospitality in the average 
small household. 

I have never met an Englishman or Englishwoman 
who did not say that they felt more at home in New 
England than in any other part of America. Parts of 
rural New England, too, are not unlike the cultivated, 
cosy scenery of English country. The Connecticut Valley 
with its farms, its wooded hills, and its villages and towns 
with shade-tree-arched streets and shingled houses, age- 
touched to an oxydized silver tone, is as insistently 



302 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

picturesque to the traveller as the back-drop in the staging 
of a rural play. 

This is the New England, too, of midday dinners, and 
the centre of the " pie " (tart) belt of the world is evidently 
situated in the midst of Massachusetts. An old woman, 
aged seventy, whom I ran across in Pittsfield, Massa- 
chusetts, claimed the championship of the pie-making 
fraternity, and offered as her credential that she had 
recently made seventy-two pies of nine different kinds, and 
had time to "set a spell on the porch afore dinner." 
Traditionally, it will be remembered, no Yankee feels his 
day well spent unless he has eaten pie at three meals. A 
New Yorker, stopping at an hotel in the midst of New 
England, asked of the waitress, " Have you any breakfast 
food ? " and she answered, '' Yes ; apple, peach, custard, 
and pumpkin." 

The towns clustered about the omnipresent " academy " 
or small college in New England are often exotic little 
centres of narrow bookishness, and striving for " culture " 
in the midst of a district of toilsome farm-life and whirring 
factories. For, despite the large class of foreign labour 
which now practically fills the mills and factories of New 
England, and which is the basis of New England's in- 
dustrial prestige, the educational plants of greater or lesser 
magnitude continue to shine as the most distinct exponent 
of New Englandism to the rest of the country. 

Every one who comes in contact with one of these 
small educational centres in New England must be edu- 
cated ; it is atmospheric, as the brimstone belief in a 
sinful one's future life was in the colonial days. The girls 
in the little shop in Main Street say, " Do you not ? " and 
" Is it not so ? " and are as careful to keep their infinitives 
intact as they are the souvenir-cup with a picture of the 
"college" that you are purchasing. I have found the 
driver of a station 'bus in one of these towns struggling 
between trains with Caesar's commentaries, and a well-known 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 303 

writer tells us as his pet story an experience of the 
early days in his career when he was working through a 
circuit of lyceum lecturing among the " academy towns " 
of Massachusetts. As they approached the town where 
he was to speak, he saw the male passengers in the railway 
car gathered together with evident delight over some local 
event. One of them left the rest, and came to him with 
the inquiry whether he was to be the lecturer of the even- 
ing. It was not so alarming a question as if it had come 
the next day from a dissatisfied auditor, and the writer 
admitted his identity. Whereupon his fellow-traveller 
proceeded, "Then, sir, you may like to hear something 
which pleases us all. The president of our lyceum has 
I been detained away this evening, and the vice-president, 
who will introduce you, is the engineer on this very train." 
In due time the lecturer was introduced to the presiding 
officer, and was by him presented, with a quiet dignity, to 
the audience ; and he did more than any other presiding 
officer had ever done for this particular lecturer by letting 
him ride back the next morning on the locomotive, the 
superb beauty of a New England sunrise, and his insight 
into the work of the literary engineer, giving him a new 
view, as he says, as to what constitutes a liberal education. 
Some of the larger small colleges — to speak Celticly — as 
Darmouth in New Hampshire, Williams and Amherst in 
Massachusetts, Trinity in Connecticut, and Bowdoin in 
Maine, are old institutions, as age is reckoned in a new 
country, and have beautifully aged, vine-covered buildings 
which stand out with a sort of mild grandeur among the 
newer Greek Letter Fraternity houses of the students, and 
the modern dwellings of its enlarging faculty circle ; for, in 
spite of periodic hard times and the competition of Western 
universities, this higher educational work in New England 
emulates Tennyson's brook. 

Of course, the social life of the professor's row of these 
towns is as filled with petty jealousies and rivalries as the 



304 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

life at an army garrison, and the struggle of reconciling 
high ideals with a small income leaves its record in the 
faces of the men and women; but it is surprising the 
number of advantages the family of a professor on a salary 
of ;^500 manage to obtain in New England. The children's 
education is secured at little cost, and the native thrift — 
the " nighness," as the Yankee expresses it — makes possible 
domestic economics which surpass those of a French 
peasant's kitchen, and the keeping up of appearances as 
gentle-folk is somehow accomplished. Many of these 
professors* families manage two or three trips to Europe 
for the education of their children and their own aesthetic 
uplift, and it is they the foreigner sees rushing about art 
galleries and inspecting cathedrals with the worried ex- 
pression of inhalation of that foreign air having a suction 
effect on their small salary reserve. They have prob- 
ably subsisted for a year or more on a diet of codfish 
cakes and baked beans — the acme of Yankee economy, 
and to a certain extent, it would seem, of taste — in order 
to make the trip possible, and they absorb an amazing 
amount in their earnest flights past art and architecture, 
custom and scenery. Then they come back on the slow, 
inexpensive steamers and begin the grind over again in 
their little New England college town ; the trip a matter 
of a pile of photographs on the parlour table, a memory of 
cheap restaurants and unsanitary pensions, but a renewed 
yearning for the beautiful. Any one who visits these 
communities realizes that there is being carried on the 
most passionate, exhausting, and really pathetic pursuit 
of culture in the United States. These households, where 
the wife, refined to attenuation, has a book-rest arranged 
to bring a volume of Browning on a level with her eyes 
as she bends over the dish-washing — one frail little woman 
with two babies still at the nursery stage told me that 
she committed to memory all of the " Ring and the Book " 
in this way — and where the professor stops smoking and 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 305 

new boots are a memory, to make possible the ownership 
of the latest scientific work or an old Latin text ; where 
the daughters wear last summer's muslins to go to the 
" faculty parties," and talk psychology or astronomy with 
the unmarried professors as a dissipation ; where meat in 
the larder is a rarity and a frock must always be turned ; 
in all this there is an element of mild tragedy in the con- 
' trasting setting of a robust industrial country like the 
United States. But this is New England, and New 
Englanders, intellectually speaking, are our Argyles. 

Yet the effect of meagre living and hard work and 
suppressed emotion in visible in the physique of the New 
. England woman in every state to-day. Some one 
I remarked years ago that the bother with the Yankee is 
I that "he rubs badly at the juncture of the soul and body,'* 
\ and I know of no better way to describe the New England 
( woman of to-day. 

i There are the exceptions in the dashing athletic type 

I of young womanhood one sees at the country clubs and 

I through the suburbs about Boston, but the typical New 

England woman — the corporate New England woman — 

the descendant of the " Puritan mother," seems to-day to 

belong to a people which has spent its physical force and 

j wants vitality. She is slight, though large of frame. Her 

I lungs are apt to be weak. Her waist is normal, which 

j means unconventional, and her hips the same size. The 

1 expression of her whole figure is flatness, in marked 

! contrast to the distinctly maternal type in the South, 

I where the full bosom and generous curve at the hips is a 

' perceptible charm even in the immature womanhood of 

I the " belle " days. 

The New England woman is inclined to be awkward, 
I too, since her climate has not allowed her relaxation and 
the ease and curve of motion that more enervating air 
imparts. She is said to step out at the tilt of "the 
Cantabrigian man " with elbows set at an angle. 

X 



306 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Such are some of the changes wrought in the type who, 
when she landed some three hundred years ago was, in 
tradition at least, "a hearty, even-minded, rosy-cheeked, 
full-fledged English lass." It is as if the self-limitation in 
the colonial days, the subsequent sparseness of wealth 
in New England, the meagreness of material ideal and, 
above all else, the hard work of generations of women who 
arose when it was yet night and sewed, and cooked, and 
washed, and spun until the evening candles sputtered in 
their sockets, had withered out all the fine wildings of her 
nature. 

Most New England women have a marvellously delicate, 
finely grained skin with the high colour of their progenitors, 
but it is more often hectic than like the Englishwoman's 
colour, so frankly the result of climate and " past genera- 
tions of health, port, and roast beef, all of the best." 

The New England woman's expression, even when she 
lives in a prosperous community, is so serious as to make 
a German hmisfrau who has discovered waste in kitchen, 
appear almost jocular, while in farm-life and less fortunate 
surroundings her face shows a weariness of spirit and a 
homesickness for heaven that makes your soul ache. 

Mentally, too, the New England woman is differ- 
entiated from what is conceded to be characteristic of the 
American woman. Her loss of grace, facile touch of 
manner, vivacity and Ughet^, in short, her lack of feminine 
charm — for there is with the New England women an 
unfortunate abruptness of manner, even among those 
travelled and most generously educated — is counter- 
balanced by a mental sympathy with her husband, an 
altruism in her domestic life, and a self-devotion passing 
fabled heroism in case of an emergency in the family life. 
Her mind is too attached or too self-conscious to allow 
much of coqitetterie or flirting or the emotional camaraderie 
with men, such as the more elemental women of Chicago 
and New York enjoy. She is undeniably frank and 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 307 

unquestionably truthful, and scorns such lies as the charming 
Southern woman tell for amusement or petty self-defence. 

A luxuriant beauty of St. Louis is said to have 
2xclaimed, ''You bet, black-jack diamond kind of a 
time!" when asked whether her social dash in Newport 
had been enjoyable. The Boston woman would have 
delivered her opinion with a precise, schoolma'am air, and 
whatever the degree of her enjoyment, I doubt whether 
her expression could get beyond "a pleasant time." 
It was a New England spinster who, looking into a Zoo 
cage for her first glimpse of the unspeakable hideousness 
3f the hippopotamus specimen, remarked mildly, ** Ain't 
he plain } " 

j The New England woman is brought up in an atmosphere 
of repression, and conservatism is instinct in her ; but since 
\ias Ewig Weibliche must persist even without confession 
of its existence, there come funny little sidelights on even the 
most maidenly. The following cautious expression of one 
bf them, referring to a prince of Austria and a lady of the 
iVeschera family, I consider altogether characteristic. " I 
don't see the wickedness of Rudolph," she half whispered. 
* I don't see why he shouldn't have followed his heart, but I 
Shouldn't dare say that to any one else in Boston. Most 
f them think as I do, but they would be shocked to hear 
e say so." 

j Still social changes within the last generation have 
brought a broadening of the conception of the " sphere " 
of woman even in New England, and while militant 
Advocates of female suffrage will not abound in New 
'England, because New England is, in many ways, more 
conservative than England itself, it seems as if the 
opportunity to apply her mind to outside problems were 
going to prove a godsend to New England's out-of-all- 
broportion female population. 

It has been said that the hope of every Englishwoman 
lover thirty is " a curate ; but even curates are far and few." 



t 



308 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

But the fate of the New England spinster is worse, since 
there is no Established Church to recruit the matrimonial 
market ; and though she may be weakly human and 
intensely feminine under her austere and stoical and 
aristocratic bearing, she is circumscribed in the develop- 
ment of all the redeeming weaknesses of a woman's life. 
The stanch physically yet mental type of New England 
housewife, who did as much to gain the reputation for 
culture for that section of our map as the Cambridge 
coterie in the days of Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes, is 
passing, and her passing is due to unnumbered husband- 
less and the physical attenuation of the married — 
attenuation resulting, it is claimed, from the spare and 
meagre diet and from the excessive household labour of 
their mothers. 

Among the moderately well-off and the poor in the 
large cities, the native New England type is fast dying out. 
Already outnumbered in her old home by women of 
foreign blood and ampler physique and less exalted ideal 
of life, intermixtures have followed and racial lines are 
gradually fading. Boston's artisan class is largely Irish- 
American and Italians ; Providence and Fall River and 
other industrial centres teem with Norwegians, Swedish 
and German peasantry ; while the mills and lumber-camps 
of the more northern parts look to the French-Canadian, 
the " Canuck," for their workmen. 

But the fisher-folk of New England remain, what there 
is left of them, distinct representatives of the Puritan type. 
The mark of his stern forbears is written large in the 
character of these New England fishermen of to-day. 

There are Norwegian sailormen who drift into these 
Yankee ports and keep an anchorage there between 
voyages to the " Banks," and there are settlements of 
dusky Portuguese among the Yankee fisher-folk ; but they 
generally work for the native fishermen, and as marriage 
in the latter case would amount to miscegenation to the 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 309 

ankee mind, the New England townspeople marry 
toong themselves until there are only about five different 
batronymics in each town and everybody is " cousin.'* 

And since the inexorable laws of nature are not averted 
|rrom New England, the idiot offspring, softened in the 
bative vernacular to " children that ain't over and above 
right," make their sadly regular appearance and grow to 
'childlike maturity, as little regarded as objects for regret 
s the discarded rubbish of spars, anchors, chains, sail- 
cloth, blocks, and cordage which collects upon their 
.Wharves. 

Their monodiet of sea-food, too, leaves its retributive 

races in the teeth and stunted bodies of the little pine- 

nots of weather-beaten boyhood one finds " doin' chores " 

bout the woodshed or helping the fishermen with their 

nets and boat-mending. 

1 The tourist '* seeing America " seldom gets as far away 
from the cities as the long-swelling sand-dunes of Cape 
Cod, rolling away in majestic emptiness mile on mile, or 
;5the gaunt, grim rocks of Maine, wrinkled as are the sea- 
gazing faces of the fisher-folk living in settlements in the 
deep gashes of the coast cliffs or on the little nubbins of 
harbour islands ; yet here, as nowhere else in the United 
States, is preserved the stock from whence America sprung 
— also those universal characteristics developed through a 
relationship between man and elemental nature — the fisher 
and the sea. 

Eminently shrewd, keenly observant, almost clairvoyant, 
in their estimate of character, these New England fisher- 
folk are, and with a grim sense of humour which, if as 
Ruskin puts it "misses the utmost subtleties of natural 
effect," is at least a relief from the profound melancholy 
which otherwise broods in their smileless faces. 

When I remonstrated with an old captain's wife who, 
bereft of husband and sons, continues to live alone in her 
isolated cottage, she replied, " Well, there's one thing 



310 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

about it, it's s' cold here in the winter thet if I should die, 
I'd keep," and her beady eyes actually twinkled. 

" It seems to me you people never die," I once said to 
another "character." 

" Waal, 'tis 'baout the larst thing we dew, I swum," he 
grinned, 
r One has but to tap for a thoroughly characteristic 
anecdote. "Half-past six Tucker," so called because he 
carries his hands joined and hanging straight down in 
front, confides to me that the trouble with city folks 
health is that they " et too much," and when I protest the 
universality of this failing, he looks seaward and delivers 
himself at length — 

" I kinder guess we all do et too much, but some's 
more partial to it than others," he prefaces his story, and 
I, versed in the ways of New England fisher-folk, await. 
" Ther was Martha Thorburn, she waste more time to her 
vittles that a man'd take to dig a bar'l o* clams. One 
day when they went up to tell her that her husband was 
drowned, there she set eatin' her dinner. Waal, she heared 
them all through 'out makin' a sound, and then she says, 
says she, 'Just you wait until I get through etin' and 
then there'll be some bellowin' round here.' " My narrator 
pauses. " You see, she warn't goin' to do nothing on a 
empty stummick," he finishes with conviction, in which, 
however, I detect a silent chuckle. 

For the most part these fishermen live in square frame 
houses, the tints of the shingles lent by the fingers of salt 
and wind and water — that is the outline of the main 
portion of their houses — but they really live and have their 
cooking and eating in the kangaroo-tail of lean-to addition, 
of summer kitchen, and woodsheds stretching back from 
the body. The best rooms in the main house are kept 
hermetically sealed, and have the musty smell of canned 
salt-fog and old kid gloves. But they are immaculately 
kept houses, and the fisher-wives go about their work, 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 311 

whether it be washing the pots and pans or down on their 
knees in the cranberry bog picking barrels full of those 
little red berries for the city market, with the same 
machine-like orderliness with which their fishermen 
husbands lay the coils of rope and stow their belongings 
on schooners or cast their nets or row their flat-bottomed 
"dories." 

Even the most sequestered inland villages of New 
England are not free in these progressive days from the 
reproach of atrocious architecture, made worse by glaring 
combinations of the unspeakable commodity known as 
"enamel paint," and the coast villages have not wholly 
escaped. In the New England fisher-town as in no 
other place in America do generation after generation of 
the same family live on in the same house, and many of 
these apparently lightly perched, grey-shingled cottages 
that look as if the first " sou'wester " might have blown 
them out to sea, have blinked the fan-lights over their 
front doors and hidden their best rooms behind green 
blinds for a century or more. And this is the accepted 
type of fisher-house in New England as surely as the 
thatched cottage has been the abode of the English 
farmer. 

The iron stags and bronze dogs and vases of later-day 
lawn decoration in rural New England are seldom found 
near the sea. The real elite there have as favourite orna- 
ments great whale vertebrae at each side of where the 
front doorstep and the clam-shell path meet, and an 
abandoned row-boat filled with earth and brimming with 
brilliant nasturtiums on a lawn is an insignia of social 
position of the occupant. If there is a barn or boat-house 
in connexion with the household, more often than not an 
old ship's figure-head or the name stripped from the bow 
of some wreck will adorn its front. 

I knew one old fellow who had the wheel of his 
schooner, disabled like his own body, set up on his lawn — 



312 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

a great upright affair like a cartwheel it was — and he 
would hobble out to it each day and stand for hours with 
his hands upon the spokes, his eyes on the ocean's horizon, 
far over the heads of his one-time mates passing in their 
ship's-roll gait along the path just outside. 

The tendency to day-dream is not foreign to the 
temperament of the average New England fisherman, 
quintessence of practicality as he is, which might reason- 
ably be regarded as the antithesis of romance in its any 
and every form. Yet almost all the characters in New 
England fishing-towns have been touched with romance — 
this woman's lover was lost at sea, and after days of 
exposure was rescued, a mental wreck, for whom she cares 
as a child. That man was found in an open boat as a 
baby, and no one may "guess," as the Yankee says, his 
parentage. That old, old woman once set fire to her own 
house to form a beacon for the returning fleet of fisher- 
boats on one of which she had two sons ; the Government 
lighthouse was built on the ruins, and one of her sons given 
charge. 

And here is a transcript from life — 

" One day a youth dropped off a coaster and looked 
about a Maine fishing-village. He stayed long enough to 
fall desperately in love with a girl whose father owned a 
Grand Banks smack, and was accordingly in' the upper 
ranks of village society. The young man, poorly clad and 
a stranger, was repulsed naturally. When he undertook 
to explain that he was a runaway from a wealthy 
English family, he was looked upon with still greater 
suspicion. 

" He set to work digging clams for a living and feeding 
his soul on occasionally fleeting glimpses of the girl he 
loved. His story had been scoffed at with so great 
unanimity that he did not make any more revelations 
regarding his prospects. But one day he appeared at the 
office of a lawyer in the shire town of the country, and 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 313 

produced papers just received from England that required 
only his signature and his oath to yield him ;^3000 from 
an estate in his native country. He got the money, put 
it into a bank, bought out the general store in the fishing- 
village, married the girl, and from the butt became the 
boss of the place." 

Of such are the New England fisher-towns. These 
sequestered Americans take romance in their lives as a 
birthright of marvel and mystery, like their technical 
knowledge of sails and tides, or as they accept the fact 
that each year the sea will claim its tithe, and this comes 
as no unexpected calamity but as a duly calculated 
nemesis. Facially they are of the Rembrandt type. 
They are totally unlike the vividly imaginative, half- 
superstition-imbued fisher-folk of Brittany and Sicily — 
contrast the Gloucester and Cape Cod fishermen of Kipling 
with the realistic poetry of the Breton stories of Pierre 
Loti — and their fatalistic calm, their total disregard of 
monotony in the sense of an objection, and the spectacle 
of generations spinning the same yarns in hours of leisure, 
contrast them as strangely with the bustling commercialism 
of the American mercantile and manufacturing centres, so 
near to them in miles, so distant in every other sense. 

There is a vast and admirable simplicity about New 
England fisher-folk. They will tell you perfectly 
innocuous bits of town gossip in a mysterious, whispered 
undertone — a relic of the secret necessity of the witch- 
craft days, perhaps — but there is comparatively little 
mean gossip about one's neighbours. When a native says 
to you, " Them Henrys be'n't no good," he says it out loud, 
and more as a matter of conviction than of maligning 
criticism. New England fishermen have, moreover, a 
marvellous strength of pride and an appreciation of duty 
which is not far from being the chief of our national 
sinews. The pride and freedom from envy is well illus- 
trated in their contrast with the "resorters," or summer 



314 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

settlers from the cities, who have acquired hundreds of 
headlands and thousands of islands along the New England 
coast for hotels and summer cottages. Often a phalanx of 
summer cottages fronts the sea in front of the native 
villages as if elbowing the little grey houses back from 
their inheritance of the sea. But this has meant money 
for the fisherman, and he does not grumble over his 
curtailed view of the sea. The more summer people there 
are in the scenery the fatter grows his hidden hoard. 
But there is no such relationship as peasant and aris- 
tocracy. The New England fisherman, whether he sells 
the produce of his kitchen garden to the city " sojourner," 
or brings clams and fish to their back doors, or takes out 
sailing-parties in his " cat-boat," always completes his 
transaction as man to man, or when he is pilot of an outing 
he is a recognized member of the party with the other 
guests and not a courier. 

I have actually felt sorry for a wealthy woman, 
summering on the Massachusetts coast, who tried to 
patronize the native housewife, who was returning her 
washing by offering an exorbitant price for an old arm- 
chair seen in the latter's " best room " when the laundry 
bargain was in progress. 

" Heavens to Betsy ! What air you talkin' about ! 
That chair belonged to Jem's great, great Grandfer' 
Brown. You might's well bid for the baby ! " was the 
scorching rebuff. 

Where penury and wealth meet in the cities there are 
heartburnings. The New England fisherman tossing in 
his battered " dory " in the swash of the millionaire's yacht 
neither sighs nor glares. For here is a people living in a 
world of their own. Materialistic to the extent of desiring 
to part the summer intruder from as much of his coin as 
their meagre dreams of avarice can encompass, but not 
envying the millionaire his greater possessions, and 
utterly untouched by the fashion and display of the 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 315 

summer sojourners," all of whom he secretly classifies as 
" a bit queer," and, above all, in these rugged coast-edges 
that first received the Puritan, does much of the best and 
the narrowness of the Puritan philosophy survive. 

The condition of rural New England where the same 
stock is supposed to have persisted is entirely different. 
So many gibes have been written, so many flings taken at 
the Yankee farmer, that if I seem to wax over-serious in 
my point of view, it may be attributed to an anxiety to 
get away from the humour a description of this rural 
population is supposed to inspire. For the New England 
farmer to-day, the men and women in obscure New 
England villages, are tragic figures in a national canvas of 
material progress and social advance. 

Add to the gullibility of any rustic type a modicum 
of dialect, and to dialect add uncouthness of garb, and you 
have the New England farmer as travestied upon the stage 
and as lampooned in our press. But such characteristics 
do not result in him from primitive instinct, as is more 
or less true of the Dartmoor folk, but from isolation and 
neglect of a once good stock. 

The retrograde of life and character in rural New 
England to-day threatens a " poor white " condition in the 
North as surely as that deplorable condition exists in 
Alabama and Tennessee. 

A superficial view of New England's countryside is 
discouraging enough ; there are so many abandoned 
farms ; the face of so many rocky cliffs proclaiming the 
merits of brands of plug tobacco ; hundreds of mossy and 
lichened fences having as the sole purpose of their crumbling 
state to expound the contents of the veterinary materia 
medica ; so many vacant barns and cattle-sheds, whose 
emptiness is only emphasized by the glaring coating of old 
circus posters. 

The New England " abandoned farm " is really often a 
bugaboo whose unsightly presence is unduly emphasized 



3i6 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

by the newer centres of commercial settlement which have 
grown up around it. In the first place, the rocky soil of 
New England never was suited for agriculture, and even 
an application of the intensive methods by which the soils 
of England, France, Belgium, and Germany are kept at a 
maximum fertility, would bring discouraging results in 
comparison with the easy and enormous production of our 
great Western farm lands. The land which can no longer 
be made to produce vegetables and cereals for profitable 
competition must be diverted to other uses. The farmer 
who has not money to buy cattle to turn it into a grazing 
or dairy farm, or the capital and time to turn it into a fruit 
orchard, or the means or faculty for turning it into a 
poultry farm, must give in ; and in the transition, when the 
tide of New England's younger generation has set city- 
ward — and undoubtedly one of the most serious features 
in the rural life in New England to-day lies in the 
drainage of its younger people to the cities — "all the 
spunkiest ones have up and got out ; it's a skimmed-milk 
place," an old fellow in a practically deserted village puts 
it — and, moreover, when the city is approaching the 
country in the sense of the extension of railroads, and the 
now more rapid extension of electric lines (a map of 
the inter-urban lines through New England looks like 
a diagram of the human nervous system), and the growth 
of busy mills and factories has given employment to the 
erstwhile agriculturists, then it is that the scattered acres 
of abandoned farm land becomes apparent. 

But the " abandoned farm " itself is not as appealing as 
the life that still goes on in New England's obscure hill 
villages, in the so-called "picturesquely quaint New 
England " of guide-book nomenclature. " Isolation," says 
Buckle, " is the mother of barbarism " ; and so it would 
seem to have demonstrated itself in rural New England. 
" The number of illegitimate children," says a recent writer 
on the New England village, " is so large that a definite 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 317 

amount has been fixed by common consent as the proper 
one to be paid by the putative father to the parents of the 
unmarried mother — not infrequently men and women 
take wives and husbands without the formality of a 
divorce or a marriage — whole families are sunk in a slough 
of vice and poverty, from which occasionally some 
enterprising son or daughter will emerge, perhaps only to 
fall back in a moment of temptation or despair." 

This is not the erring of a people untouched of civiliza- 
tion, whose naive ideas of wedlock have not reached out 
to the fact that a ceremony is necessary. These are, 
on the contrary, church-going, psalm-singing, Puritan 
descendants, who considered dancing immoral, but condone 
the launching of an illegitimate soul as merely material 
for the tittle-tattle of after-service gossip in the " meetin' 
house." But, as some one has said, "that is not much 
more inconsistent than our consecrated Puritan ancestors 
who never went to the play, bless you, no ! Instead they 
went to hangings." 

After their response to the insistent behest of the 
church bell, and the post-sermon opportunity to talk 
things over — it has been remarked, "the greater the 
calamity to community or individual the more worshippers 
to talk it over " — the New England villagers go home and 
live for a week on scandal and pork. In a garrison, or in 
a small frontier town, monotony drives people to extreme 
sociability, but in rural New England the country people 
rarely call on one another ; they object strenuously to 
" visits " ; they have an almost superstitious dread of 
" takin' anybody into their house," and there is a morbid 
shrinking into that " white castle with the green blinds," 
the farmhouse. 

In not a few of these sequestered communities, as in the 
fisher-groups, the same families have intermarried until the 
stock is noticeably weakened, and a brood of deformed 
and idiot children makes it appearance. An author, 



3i8 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

writing of the New England village, comments as follows 
on the result of this perverted heredity : " It is not nice to 
have six toes on each foot. It is worse to be hare-lipped. 
Cross-eyes are none the less disagreeable because they are 
very common. One of our families is * muffle-chopped.' 
Another whole family is deaf and dumb. The proprietor 
of the saw-mill stands three feet two inches with his boots 
on. One Israel Glenn is a giant, measuring seven feet in 
height. He has, as the Jesuit Feval said of Dr. Vernon, 
* A double chin and a triple belly,' and he wears from 
three to six coats to increase his apparent bulk. Nor is 
he is less eager to display his muscular prowess. He 
wields an axe, made especially for him, weighing nine 
pounds without the helve. He swings a scythe eleven 
foot long." 

I do not know of any more depressing experience than 
to be taken below the surface in one of these New 
England villages. The foreigner would scarcely believe 
that he was in America, while the American, who is 
always protesting his sentimental fondness for " old New 
England " to the extent of pooh-poohing its perils, will find 
that a ghost not as easily laid as the " abandoned farm " 
stalks in the abandoned farmer there. 

Of course life in these hamlets is not all gloom and 
poverty. In some of the houses you find high-boys and 
warming-pans, and gilt-framed, last-century looking-glasses, 
and spinning-wheels, and blue-and-white china and hundred- 
year-old clocks that the tourist sleuth for antiquities has 
not scented yet, and there is an air of tradition and an old 
couple going down to a reposeful old age as surely as the 
green mosses on the damp shingles of their abode. The 
very gables of the houses and the sagging ridge-poles 
of barns and granaries speak of ancestral interests and 
family history in a way that is refreshing in a freshly 
varnished civilization. 

The vernacular of rural New England is unique, 



THE NEW ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 319 

particularly the expletives. '* Airquakes and apple 
sauce ! " " Heavens to Betsy ! " " Wall, I vum ! " are the 
classical standard. Nor is the repartee lacking in point. 

A " character " in one of these villages, reproved by the 
minister of the gospel for his habitual profanity, answered : 
"Waal, parson, here's how it is. You pray and I swear, 
an' we don't neither on us mean nahthin' by it" 

After a demonstration by the village choir, one old 
deacon was asked whether a certain member did not have 
a cultivated voice. "Dunno 'baout that," retorted the 
long-suffering deacon, " but saound's if he'd been over it at 
least once with a harrow." 

The adjective ^'shrewd " attaches to the Yankee tradi- 
tionally as the tail to the kite or the trunk to the elephant, 
' yet apparently there is in all the world no sort of man so 
I helpless in the grip of knavery as the New England farmer. 
Experience is said to teach something, but somehow the 
I New England farmer never seems to get enough. A 
I ruralist who escaped the lethargy as a runaway to city life, 
I returned to his village, observed and wrote, "Travelling 
oculists, v/ith smug, shaven faces and mysterious gold 
earnings, do reasonable things to our crystalline lenses ; 
but we turn no less pliant attention to the representations 
of the itinerant dentist. That man of science, having 
extracted our teeth and made off with a ' deposit,' never 
returns to bring us the finished product that was to emerge, 
at no distant day, from his remote laboratory. Then, 
instead of learning that one must seek treatment of a 
reputable practitioner, or be fraudulently dealt with, we 
are only thereby made ready to pay tribute to the next 
* Kickapoo Indian ' who pitches his conical dispensary in 
our cow-pasture. We still fall prey to book agents ; we 
still feed tramps, as who would say, ' If you come within a 
mile of here, drop in ' ; we have implicit faith in the power 
of* divining rods' to locate springs ; we are even credulous 
of 'Western loans,' and we have a sensation of glossy, 



320 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

satin-like satisfaction when made aware that wealthy 
investment companies have * heard us well spoken of in 
the Rockies." But easily as the New England innocents 
may be " taken in " by the outsider, they are indeed as 
shrewd as tradition proclaims them among themselves. 
What Wall Street sharp could have driven such a bargain 
as the old Vermont farmer in a general store achieved in 
the following dialogue ? — 

"You say ye want a dollar fur the boots. Take 
seventy-five cents ? " 

*' Yes." 

" Ye mout throw in one o' them woollen throat-warmers 
too, hey > " 

" All right." 

" Hold on thar. The boots ain got no strings." 

" I'll give you a pair of strings." 

" Better make it two pair. One won't last no time." 

" Very well ; two pair it is." 

" Can't ye chuck in one o' them paper collars fur good 
measure ? " 

" Oh, I guess so, rather than miss a trade." 

" Look-a-here, when a feller buys a bill o' goods off ye, 
don't ye set 'em up .? " 

"Yes. What'U you take?" 

" Gimme two plugs o' chewin' tobacker ana pound o' 
scrapple." 

After all, New England is a new-world area, saturated 
with three centuries of strenuous life, which has sent its 
myriad rootlets westward to the shores of the Pacific. The 
parent stem may bear a few fruitless branches, but New 
England's cities, as its industries, are still in full and 
vigorous growth. 



CHAPTER XIV 
SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 

ON an occasion when unusual proceedings were antici- 
pated from the House of Representatives and a 
throng had filled that wing of the Capitol, I heard 
I by chance the British Ambassador explaining the division 
( of the gallery rights to a fellow-countryman, evidently a 
stranger to Uncle Sam's way : This was the section reserved 
for the use of the Diplomatic Corps ; directly across was 
I the reservation for the wives, daughters, and guests of 
' Congressmen, with the front pew gated off for the special 
privilege of the Speaker's family ; over the clock was the 
press gallery, etc., etc. The Englishman listened and then, 
at a pause, waved his arms to include the packed gallery 
benches, pressing the pre-empted sections on all sides, and 
exclaimed, *' And are those just all sorts of persons ? " 

" All sorts of persons." The phrase comes readily to 
mind now that I want to describe America's largest 
summer resort. For though Lowell maintained that he 
" loved to enter pleasure by a postern," and another 
American man of letters in his inventory of a '* fair capital 
of manners " includes " quiet ways, low tones of voice, lips 
that can wait, and eyes that do not wander " ; still, the 
crowd who go to swell the human bee-hive at Atlantic 
City on the south-eastern coast of New Jersey do not want 
to enter by any back door, nor silently nor reposefully. 
Every one of the 500,000 all " sorts of persons " who stream 
Y 321 



322 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

into this holiday community seems to desire to announce 
his arrival by three hand-springs to the front of the stage, 
a grin, and a " Here-we-are-again " shout. The persons 
who said that Americans only laugh when intoxicated 
should go to Atlantic City and witness the tremendous 
capacity for wholesome jollification that America's "all 
sorts of persons," filled with the carnival spirit of a holiday 
by the sea, do possess. If the " all sorts of persons " 
screaming indulgently over the sands, or strutting 
overdressed on the Board Walk, seem to the foreigner 
incredibly vulgar, and possessed of crass materialism in its 
most hopeless form, he should at least realize the innocence 
of it all, that it is a relaxation of the bonds of custom 
rather than their breaking. He should remember the old 
retort, but a good one, which the American girl made to 
the Englishman who said, " I think your word * nice ' is 
such a nasty word," when she replied, " Well, do you think 
your word * nasty * is a nice word ? " 

Atlantic City may not be in good taste according to 
conservative standards, but it displays a distinct distaste 
for gaudy vice. The formalities of life exasperate our " all 
sorts of people " ; but though complete disregard for con- 
ventionality crystallized into the phrase " everything goes," 
is written in the coat-of-arms of Atlantic City, there is a 
code of behaviour unconsciously sustained by these '* all 
sorts of people," simply because it is woven in their rough 
fibre, that makes this summer capital of the people the 
" straightest," cleanest resort of its kind in the world. It 
is bourgeois but healthy. For instance, a young girl may 
walk the beach in the full light of day in the most 
abbreviated of costumes and no one think any the worse of 
her, because publicity is her protection, and her every 
movement is made before a thousand eyes. But after the 
bathing hour, when night falls, there is a different code, and 
should she adopt the unconventional in dress, or make 
herself unduly conspicuous in a hotel or on the Board Walk, 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 323 

she at once classes herself among the forbidden. And 
while our middle class will cross the ocean to get a first- 
hand view of the ostensibly seamy side of Paris, and 
glory in contact with all that is socially daring and lawless 
according to their definition of the same, they do not 
tolerate it on their own playground. The 'American middle 
class is respectable, to the sacrifice, perhaps, of tempera- 
ment and imagination, but not to a hilarious good time. 

The manager of one of the show cafes of half-worldly 

reputation in Paris once called his concert-hall troupe 

about him, and remarked, " These Americans have come 

to hear and to see something devilish. Let them have it 

to the top of their bent, but do not frighten them away. 

I They are, after all, very proper, these Americans." 

I But the foreigner in America is not always so subtle, 

( and he easily misinterprets Atlantic City. During an 

enforced stay there with a small invalid, the discord of the 

blatant pleasure life against my own anxiety was some- 

, what relieved by the amusing confusion of a young 

Englishman who was stopping at the same hotel. He 

' was completely mystified with what I knew he inwardly 

i termed the colossal vulgarity and the unimpeachable 

I innocence of it all. He looked at these women, dressed 

! and jewelled like princesses — their days devoted to chang- 

j ing and displaying gowns — and gradually came to realize 

I that underneath this glitter was the self-repression of 

provincials ; that they talked little, and did not know how 

I to flirt ; that they were, in a word, thoroughly respectable 

middle-class matrons out from a ten months' period of 

hibernation in a small town or a large city, where their 

husband's rapid rise in fortune did nothing to their social 

obscurity, but to whom the annual dash to Atlantic 

City made them, in their own smug estimate, "society 

ladies." 

Then, too, at first the English guest regarded askance 
the antics on the beach of young women in bathing 



324 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

costumes, no more concealing than a ballet costume would 
have eclipsed their fine figures, who raced and tossed ball, 
and even danced with youths in bathing suits of cinder- 
track brevity, as the music of a band on one of the piers 
floated down ; but at last he confided to me, a little crest- 
fallen, I thought, over what had promised spiced pages for 
his diary of American impressions, that they were just 
like " any fellow's sisters, only horribly brought up." " It 
seems shockingly elemental, you know," he added, "but 
it's just high jinks, that's all." 

His first glance at the extravagant outrageousness of 
gaudy, unconventional Atlantic City had made him 
expect a real thrilling shock, and, expectant of earth- 
quakes, he received only the little box of violated con- 
ventions. The " painted ladies " of his imagination were 
merely good, healthy, young barbarians with eight-o'clock- 
in-the-morning complexions. 

When I told him that a freak of fashion decreed that 
at Easter-time real society — the Newport, Lenox, and 
Bar Harbour contingent — should journey to this then 
deserted Mecca by the sea, and that the Easter parade of 
Atlantic City is a thing of dignity and peaceful extrava- 
gance — he looked down from the pier where we stood on 
the screaming, audaciously clad throng surging over the 
beach and tried to believe me. I know he did, but I have 
no doubt he was trying to picture the Mall Sunday 
parade transferred to the Strand. 

During July and August, Atlantic City is the paradise 
of America's great extravagant class of " all sorts of 
people," and they do have such an extremely good time 
there. An American once said of it, " If Rudyard 
Kipling should suddenly go insane, and in the height of his 
delirium write a poem, he might convey a faint impression 
of what Atlantic City does to the observer's brain." 
However, the worth of the medicine for a sick person is 
altogether independent of the question as to whether he 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 325 

has a scientific opinion with regard to it, or merely thinks 
of it as an old woman would do ; and while to the high- 
strung, Atlantic City may present merely ear-torment and 
a truly fearful spectacle, the " all sorts of persons " believe 
in it as a mighty cure, and gravitate there for recuperation 
and healthy excitement, undoubtedly finding both. These 
"all sorts of persons" who feel they must go there 
every year are, too, after all, most characteristically 
American. 

If a student of our national characteristics should 
wish to understand the American people, he ought to look 
for some typical specimens at Atlantic City. I have often 
, thought that the foreigner of distinction, the curious 
Ij investigator or the peripatetic prince, who is always 
I seeking something extra and vividly American, and who 
* is usually shown Niagara Falls or Brooklyn Bridge, or 
I Yellowstone Park, or the Yosemite Valley, or even a 
( glimpse of Newport, instead should be hurried to Atlantic 
! City in midsummer, for there he would be assured for once 
I of a genuine sensation. For this great middle-class play- 
ground is the eighth wonder of the world. Overwhelming 
in its social crudeness, barbaric and hideous as its various 
artificial attractions are, yet the student of humanity can 
bear witness to the whole panorama of American life. 
Moreover, it has, as one writer puts it, " the fascination 
of kaleidoscopic multitudinousness." 

There is a glorious front of seashore, unbroken for 
miles along the majestic ocean, and all the way a beach of 
glistening white sand, and then, lining that superb sweep 
of coast, a frantic, fantastic, lunatic's dream of merry-go- 
rounds (" carousals," with every beast and bird known to 
jungle and nightmare to ride), hotels, theatres, moving- 
picture shows, scenic labyrinths, fortune-teller's booths, 
exposed candy counters of Joseph's-coat tinting, Chinese 
laundries. Oriental bazaars, and open alcoves for Japanese 
games of chance, flower-shops, millinery exhibitions, all of 



326 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

every conceivable and inconceivable size and shape and 
colour — blue, green, scarlet, gold, and purple, and smiling 
you in the eye beneath the brilliant sunshine ; for Atlantic 
City is hot, even as the pitiless summer in our cities, 
except for the rescuing salt sea breeze — until you gasp 
over its tawdriness and its magnificence in one breath. 
And between this gaudy planking and the sea runs seven 
miles of Board Walk, crowded with 50,000 human beings, 
who strut and swagger, or make what progress they may 
in the congested parts, or who roll along in basket chairs, 
propelled by grinning negroes, at every hour of the day or 
night. I have seen this plank boulevard so crowded that 
progress was made by a step and then a halt ; and under- 
neath on the sandy way trudged a procession of nursemaids 
with their charges, safe out of the way of the army tramp- 
ing steadily overhead. As a rule though, the children are 
on dress parades with their mothers, and such exaggeration 
of dress as both exhibit is sometimes enlightening as to 
what may be done in caricaturing a prevailing mode. I 
used to wonder, during the recent craze for upholstered 
coiffure, how the various phrenologists whose signs dot 
the promenade manage to practise their art, while small 
boys in skin-tight velvet suits, and very early editions of 
womanhood in satin frocks and gorgeous flower-trimmed 
hats, v/ould command pity if one had not seen them 
romping in the sand earlier in the day, buying air-balloons, 
huge pretzels or hokey-pokey (an apology for ice-cream, 
with all accent removed from the latter word) from the 
various vendors who derive their trade from the beach at 
bathing-time. 

There are, of course, no bathing-machines at Atlantic 
City. They would be incomprehensible to the goddessy 
young woman who counts that walk of over a hundred 
feet from the bath-house, where she has donned her 
marvellously fitting and strikingly toned costume with all 
the care of a ball-gown, to the water's edge as a triumphal 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 327 

entry — not into the ocean, oh no ! but into public view ; for 
she only bathes, if at all, as a last resort after the beach 
parade and frolicking are over. Yet some of these 
gorgeous ballet-girls do go into the water above their 
ankles ; some venturesome bathers really go into the 
surf, where they scream and clutch the nearest human 
being and scream again. This scream is sometimes the 
prelude to an acquaintanceship, for the historic Englishman 
who let a drowning man go down because he could not 
bring himself to rescue him without having been properly 
introduced is not the model of Atlantic City etiquette. 
" I didn't know a single young man when I came down 
here, but I've met a whole lot, just through sister's being 
saved by that Harvard man. We like it here lots now," 
a pretty Western girl on her first stay in Atlantic City 
confided to me. This same girl from the West, who had 
induced " the folks " to come East for some years, summed 
up the characteristics of certain American summer 
resorts in these words : " Asbury Park, too religious ; 
Long Branch, too stuffy ; Southampton, too respectable ; 
Lenox, too scattered, too many large country seats ; Bar 
Harbour, too slow, too many Philadelphians ; Newport, 
too snobby ; Narragansett Pier, too near Newport, and 
not ' it ' ; Atlantic City, ' it,' something doing all the 
time, always on the jump." There is certainly "something 
doing " all the time. 

When darkness falls, the whole place leaps out with a 
full glare of electric light till, seen from a boat outside, the 
entire coast seems to be a single sheet of fire. Huge iron 
piers shoot their noses far out into the ocean and blazon 
forth, in flaring letters twenty feet long, the merits of 
somebody's pickles and somebody else's cigarettes, and on 
one a good-sized theatre wakes up for an evening per- 
formance of some " latest New York success " ; on another 
the animals of a full-fledged circus roar and bellow and 
whine restively ; on another the " loop the loops," and the 



328 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

" loops of death," thunder and grind ; bands crash dis- 
cordantly ; scores of orchestras in the different hotels and 
eating-houses awake, for Atlantic City is the eatingest place 
in the world ; street pianos plunk away ; concert-halls send 
forth fragmentary shriekings, apparently of agony ; the 
" barkers " at the peep-shows along the Board Walk get 
into action. It is infernal, astonishing, and, it must be 
confessed, infinitely picturesque. Nothing is omitted from 
the repertoire to make the American dollar feel at home. 
And still not all the visitors at Atlantic City are as opulent 
as they look when on the Board Walk parade-grounds. 
Many have saved the year through for a two weeks' 
holiday there, and are staying, not at one of the magnificent 
hostelries clustering about the water-front, but in a side 
street in one of the packing-box type of summer hotels — 
flimsy honeycombs of pine, which look as if they might be 
pulled to pieces by your fingers — or at a boarding-house 
back in the city proper. For a sober city of some forty 
thousand population lies here on the New Jersey coast 
when the summer guests come not to augment it with a 
hotel, boarding-house and summer cottage total of never 
less than two hundred thousand persons. Many of the 
guests at the large hotels *' are not what they seem " 
financially, and it lends an element of interest to speculate 
as to whether the young man, nonchalantly inhaling his 
cigarette on the piazza of a hotel with the reputation for 
the most expensive discomfort in the community, is really 
what he appears — a prosperous Wall Street broker, or a 
chemist's clerk from Schenectady, N.Y., who is "putting 
up a front." But, having been stung by that strange 
summer craving for noise and confusion and show, he will, 
in either case, get his fill of fun at Atlantic City. Whether 
he merely tickles his income or scrapes the bottom of his 
bank account to stay there, the noise is undoubtedly worth 
the price. For, while in national tariff adjustment it is 
said that our first rule is to get the most feathers with the 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 329 

least squawk, in the summer resorts of America the 
squawk must be loud and public, or we are not sure that 
we are plucking the feathers of pleasure at all. 

I have heard Atlantic City referred to as the nether 
millstone upon which all the graces of life, all the ideality 
of existence, are ground to atoms ; as a demonstrated con- 
fession that our people are incapable of self-resourceful 
enjoyment ; but, on the other hand, I have heard such 
pessimism described as the twitchings of a dyspeptic 
philosopher, and the glitter and music and bustle of 
Atlantic City upheld as an offset to the lack of holiday 
spirit in our hustling American life. For my part, I think 
our " all sorts of persons " should be commended for the 
courage of their native instinct to seek stimulation in 
sitting in stuccoed grottos and listening to coon songs 
amid Atlantic City's unending shriek of brass. At least, 
there is no pretence of a yearning for Ibsen and Wagner 
among the " all sorts of persons." 

But, however that may be, we cannot ignore the fact 

that in most of our summer resorts, even of the better type, 

there is exploitation of all sorts of fads, and a certain social 

vulgarity which, in the end, must leave its stamp on the 

people who frequent them. And the effect of social life at 

these public resorts is especially disastrous to children 

who are passing into womanhood and manhood. 

I To bracket Newport and Atlantic City is to reckon 

with the ire of both, for Newport is a byword for all 

I which the strong young social children among our ** all 

j sorts of persons " disapprove, and Atlantic City means the 

hoi polloi from which Newport shrinks as Satan from holy 

I water. Yet Newport, as well as Atlantic City, proclaims 

I that we are a gregarious people — even a millionaire in 

! America does not want to "flock by himself" — and 

j Newport much more subtly, much more extravagantly, is, 

nevertheless, looking for sensational entertainment, even 

as there is a fortune for any one installing a novelty in 



330 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

side-shows on Atlantic City's Board Walk. But there is 
hardly a good middle-class citizen in America who cannot 
give names and dates of malodorous anecdotes of Newport 
life ; and while Newport is undoubtedly flattered by being 
told that it is pursuing later Rome's primrose path to the 
everlasting bonfire, and at times seems bent on nothing 
so much as justifying her reputation for rubbing the 
registered trademarks for conventions off her people, still, 
she remains the undisputed queen of all watering-places, 
and the head of the list in America's " social register." 

Granting that a social freak must arise in the country 
developing a caste that is neither entirely hypocrisy nor 
admittedly aristocracy, it is hard to tell what fate picked 
out as its centre this plain little town at the tip of a minor 
state ; . for Newport is the most out-of-the-way, annoying 
place to reach in the East. So far as typography goes, 
it is almost treeless, and while land and salt water are 
enchantingly wedded, so are they at a hundred other 
points along the ocean edge of Massachusetts and New 
Jersey and Long Island. Her slate cliffs and surf-combed 
reefs and bathing beaches are no more picturesque than 
the mammoth granite boulders guarding Cape Ann but 
a little further north. Narragansett Pier, Newport's next- 
door neighbour in summer resorts, with all its splendour 
of public appointment, has never developed into anything 
but a sort of secondary base in advancing socially on 
Newport. As some one has said, there is all the differ- 
ence between the sporting page and the social column. 
No resort in America has ever rivalled Newport. She is 
enthroned on the cliffs— the quaint old town backing her 
up with traditions as in Brighton, England — society is her 
court, and the sea is at her feet. She holds the trump 
card, plays the game, and collects the stake in money, 
nerves or reputation — sometimes one, sometimes the other, 
and sometimes all three. It is related that one of the 
Newport leaders, lying desperately ill in her castle there, 





■mam 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 331 

and facing the alternative of an operation or death, 
demanded of the attending physician, " Couldn't you 
possibly wait, doctor, until between seasons ? " 

It is generally conceded that Newport is the one corner 
of our civilization where the American worldly world quite 
lives up to its lurid reputation in the provinces. One 
writer elucidates, " After all, it is the real thing — as real as 
any community can be that exists solely to amuse itself — 
and it gratifies the cynic far better than its many imita- 
tions up and down the coast, with their pose of a moral 
superiority. No place changes less in years, is so fixed in 
its standards, and assimilates new-comers more easily, pro- 
vided they are willing to make the proper sacrifices, and 
have the heaven-born genius to buckle to Newport's 
standards. No place clings more ardently to its old gods. 
You do not hear of Newport's ups and downs. It has a 
sort of Chinese civilization. Every season is billeted 
across the land as the most brilliant ever, and last year's 
as the deadliest dull. Truth to tell, Newport delights in 
thinking itself dull and in telling outsiders so. Casual 
observers — any but those who camp outside the social Port 
Arthur, preparing for a three-year do-or-die siege — do not 
interest the place. But a family of determined Nogis, their 
money, origin, the cleverness of their social strategy, 
become proper types of general talk. The more accept- 
able the family, the more it is "roasted." That is the 
Newport way of surrendering. The siege finally becomes 
a sort of glacial movement, and the outposts parley with 
the enemy by saying to one another, " They never really 
tried to get in, you know. Just think ; they've been here 
three years ! Next season they'll be all right. The 
children are the very best, even if the old folks are quite 
impossible. Did you see the aigrettes she had on this 
morning ? Like a cook ! " And in the allotted three 
years, the family are over the ramparts and sitting 
gorgeously in the market-place. But changed, so changed ! 



332 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

that, to see and hear its members talk, you would imagine 
that they had always camped upon Ochre Point ; that they 
had ordered the forty steps built, or fed the first sack of 
corn into the old stone mill " (these being the land-marks 
of primitive Newport, not unlike the Old Manor House at 
Brighton). And Newport has its permanent residents — old 
Rhode Island families, dating back to the days of the 
colowies when letters were addressed "New York, near 
Newport," and looking upon the occupants of the villas as 
strangers. " They are amusing enough," was the way one 
of the old residents put it. Another, more sarcastic, 
described them as " Our unpaid actors in the drama of 
fashion." 

Via Newport is, however, one of the routes to New 
York society, even if you are a New Yorker, and the 
progress or failure of so-and-so and such-and-such can be 
traced by a discerning leader of the summer-resort news, 
and sometimes quick entries are effected. Lacking bridge, 
which is literally one of the bridges to span the gap, or a 
sympathetic friend who has " gotten in " and may throw 
you a line to pull you up, a fad, if you can make it, is a 
pretty fair life-raft to float on ; for a Newport season is not 
complete without its shock. And somehow or other the 
yellow press always get wind of the shock. The dance in 
a certain ball-room, with the guests clad in the sketchiest 
of bathing-costumes ; the young man who appears at a 
cotillon in dkolleti regalia and pyramidal coijjurey to the 
utter deception of half the partners ; the young woman 
who wears live snakes at a reception as a finish to her 
toilette; the "pet" luncheon where the aristocrats of 
dogdom are the guests, and served by their fond millionaire 
owners — all this appears in page illustrations and border 
illumination of portraits of the leading ladies and heroes 
of the latest Newport divorces. How these " features " of 
Newport life reach publicity no one ever knows. The leak 
in the American cotton market is an A B C mystery in 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 333 

comparison. One suspects an analogy with the communi- 
cation received by a Western editor, which read : " Dear 
Sir : While leaving Casey's saloon last night I was un- 
fortunate enough to get into a slight discussion with my 
late friend Buck Jones, and found it necessary to draw on 
him, which same being the best shot in the county, resulted 
fatally. I trust you will not allow any young snipe 
reporter on your paper to give notoriety to this lamentable 
incident." 

But whatever may be Newport's career of guile and 
aberration behind the scenes, any one in search of the 
spectacular in the outward life there is doomed to dis- 
appointment. The latest "shriek" in bathing-costumes 
is not found at Newport. Black silk, dark blue, well- 
fitting, but nothing startling ; and while many of the young 
women dress for bathing at home and walk or drive down 
to the beach — for Bailey's Beach is but a step from their 
villas — they are always enveloped in long bathing-cloaks of 
the Irish peasant type. The Casino is one of the centres 
of Newport life, and has much the appearance of a usual 
country club. It is one of the traditions of Newport 
society that when the Casino opens each season you must 
go there and register, thus officially reporting your 
presence, although every one who is any one knows that 
you have been in your villa on the cliffs for weeks. But 
the custom gives the opening day at the Casino the 
appearance of a big reception in town, with even the " lady 
reporter " peering around noting " ecru insertions " and 
" real Irish lace robes." The pranks of the inner recesses, 
of tea and whist and ball-rooms, are not here apparent. 
It is a thoroughly conventional, most expensively clad 
gathering that streams into the Casino in the morning for 
playing or watching tennis. Not but that it is lively and 
picturesque enough. 

From the villas to the Casino is not quite far enough 
for aeroplanes ; but if they ever become fashionable as 



334 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

vehicles, Newport will have to go in for them and alight 
at the Casino from above, possibly on the roof. Even for 
automobiles, the distances to the Casino are absurdly 
short, which may account for the horse not being wholly 
unfashionable at the " queen of watering-places." Many 
of the girls drive up to the Casino in village phaetons, with 
tops and fringe, and a *' tiger " in the rumble. But for the 
" tiger " and the shortness of the drive to the Casino, there 
might be an affectation of simplicity about the phaeton. 
Under the circumstances it is surprisingly sensible, and 
the girls as they drive up make a pretty and engaging 
picture. 

Tennis, the bathing at Bailey's Beach, the morning 
chat or bridge over, and the luncheon hour at hand, it is 
surprising how swiftly society vanishes. It is as if it had 
been wiped off the scene. Nor does it show up again 
until about four o'clock, when it reappears in motor-cars 
and victorias on Bellevue Avenue and the Ocean Drive. 
This is Newport's daily " parade," but it hardly makes as 
brave a show as formerly, because the automobiles are out 
for longer runs. The parade is not a thing of the past, 
as it is in New York, where every afternoon during the 
season, Fifth Avenue once had the finest horse show in 
the world, but some of its glory is dimmed. 

The national tennis tournament is held at the Newport 
Casino, and invariably is followed by complaints about the 
insufficient number of umpires and linesmen. One player 
of national reputation explained this lack of officials by 
saying that umpires and linesmen had to be imported, 
" because," as he cruelly phrased it, " Newport men are so 
useless." 

Nevertheless, justice demands the admission that some 
of the best skill in the country at racquet, saddle, and tiller 
is represented by the sons and brothers of the wicked 
foolish ones of Bellevue Avenue, Newport, R.I. It was 
for tennis that the Newport women invented the marvellous 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 335 

fashion of reversing their veils, veiling the face from below 
up, from the chin to the eyes, relying upon the hat-brim 
to shade the upper part of the face. 

There are afternoons when society does "the naval 
training station " at Newport, and especially has this 
been the case since a commodore of the New York Yacht 
Club and his fleet of officers reviewed the brigade of 
apprentice seamen at the station by invitation of the 
commandant. Sometimes the brigade sings patriotic 
songs, " The Star Spangled Banner " and " America," and 
marches to its quarters singing " Columbia, the Gem of 
the Ocean." Afterwards, the girls and general officers 
stroll about the grounds or sit on guns, quite as up-to-date 
as the women themselves. Newport society never seems 
quite so attractive as when it unbends a bit at the naval 
training station. 

For the most part, however, the formal entertainments 
of the usual Newport sort are of a magnificent monotony — 
electric lights in the shrubbery, tents built out from the 
villa for dancing, supper, and decorations, to give all 
newspapers and the " Florist Gazette " adjectival orgies. 

Some of the marble palaces of Newport are despoiled 
of effect by being built without enough ground perspective, 
" sitting," as some one has said, " on their tiny lots as 
appropriate as Windsor Castle on a suburban 20 x 20." 
I know of no better description of these magnificent villas 
perched on the granite eminences than the suggestion that 
" if better built, and surrounded with a few olive trees, they 
would fulfil, for one who had never been there, his idea 
of the Riveria." But magnificent Newport surely is. 
There is no resort in the world with as great wealth 
among the resident clientele, and really it is no more 
artificial than might be logically expected in a nation 
with aristocracy's meaning as shifting as the sands of the 
sea, or, perhaps, the number of commas in figured statements 
of our rich men's possessions. 



336 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

I once met a Westerner who, having made a lucky 
strike, had taken a holiday and a trip across the continent 
to seek in his Newport lair the specimen of humanity 
whom President Roosevelt, in a message to Congress, had 
described as "that particular kind of a multi-millionaire 
who is almost the least enviable, and is certainly one of 
the least admirable, of all our citizens ; a man of whom it 
has been well said that his face has grown hard and cruel 
while his body has grown soft ; whose son is a fool, and 
his daughter a foreign princess ; whose nominal pleasures 
are, at best, those of a tasteless and extravagant luxury ; 
and whose real delight, whose real lifework, is the accumula- 
tion and use of power in its most sordid and least elevating 
form. In the chaos of an absolutely unrestricted com- 
mercial individualism under modern conditions this is a 
type that becomes prominent as inevitably as the marauder 
baron became prominent in the physical chaos of the Dark 
Ages." And the Westerner's, " Oh, pshaw ! Their ain't 
a decent fighter among them. All they seem to want to 
do is to live and loll and loaf all by themselves," expresses 
the scorn for Newport which these children of the prairie 
have sucked from the rich and boundless soil of the un- 
trammelled West. It is another sidelight on the diversity 
of social conditions in America. 

Bar Harbour is one of the more exclusive of the resorts 
on the Maine coast, and here the feature of the season is 
the entertainment of the officers of the warship squadron. 
People at Bar Harbour are not so self-absorbed as at 
Newport, and the arrival of the ships is a real " event." 
Here, too, the people are necessarily more thrown upon 
nature than at Newport, where there is the constant back- 
ground of the city, with Providence and Boston not far 
away, and New York fairly accessible. A week-end at 
Newport is easily managed by a New Yorker ; not so a 
week-end at Bar Harbour. There, too, the native industries 
are more in evidence. Every lobster-man and scallop 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 337 

' fisherman has his motor-dory, and at one time the early 
morning chug-chug of the dory fleet was so disturbing to 
the summer visitors that a movement was started to have 
every motor-dory equipped with a muffler. Life at Bar 
Harbour also centres largely around what at other resorts 
would be a casino, but there, where water sports enter so 
largely into the entertainment, is the swimming club. 
Here are tennis-courts, and the game is a favourite 
diversion. But swimming is the great feature of a Bar 
Harbour morning. 

The water along the coast of Maine is intensely cold. 
The arrangements at the Bar Harbour Swimming Club, 
however, do away with this disadvantage. A part of the 
sea has been enclosed by a broad wall of concrete, and 
the water is not constantly sweeping in from the cold 
I depths. There is a spring-board for diving, a raft to 
climb on and rest, and the cement walls are so broad that 
people who have not gone in bathing can walk out and 
watch and " jolly " the people in the water. 

About the tennis-courts there is more freedom than at 
Newport. Instead of watching the games from verandas 
or from other substitutes for grand-stands, the spectators 
take chairs out on the lawn or sit down on the grass. 
There also is more latitude in choice of costume. Again, 
to draw a comparison with Newport, where the men go to 
the casino of a morning in sack or walking suits, the Bar 
Harbour men are in white flannel, with white canvas shoes. 
Every one seems to go to Bar Harbour for a genuinely 
good time. Automobiles are conspicuous by their absence. 
When the flower show or vaudeville is on there is an un- 
broken line of carriages at the Building of Art. Probably 
this is the only arts building at a fashionable American 
summer resort, and excellent concerts are given there by 
a fine orchestra. This was the basis of a satirical act in 
the " home-talent " vaudeville show at Bar Harbour. The 
curtain rose, disclosing a group of women engaged in loud 



338 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

and lively conversation, while the orchestra was trying to 
make itself heard in a classical selection. Which shows 
that Americans appreciate a joke on themselves even 
when engaged in the serious business of summer resorting. 

But it is in her winter playground that the United 
States is most fortunate. The European goes to shivery 
Italy for the winter, and generally finds that every portion 
of it suffers from the cold, while we have California, 
Arizona, Texas and Florida, all warmer than Italy, and 
offering a greater variety of natural attractions and dis- 
comforts. The winter tourists in our South-western states 
are, generally speaking, of our sad army of tubercular 
stricken, for equable hot climate vies with our extreme 
cold treatment at Saranac, just as Davos and Southern 
France divide the sorrowful toll abroad. 

California is at once a summer and winter resort, and 
the story of snowballing at the top of the mountain on her 
coast range, picking oranges at its base, and ocean-bathing 
from the shore of the city it shadows, does not grow any 
the less true by age. Southern California is a wonderful 
climate, and in many sections, in answer to the question, 
" What do these people live on ? " the reply still comes, " On 
the tourists." 

But the great Mecca of fashion and wealth in the 
winter is Florida. In forty-eight hours at the outside 
any one in New York or Chicago may change his en- 
vironment from arctic to tropic, winter or summer; zero 
mercury for one between 60° and 80° above; ice and 
snow for blue skies and bluer waters, ever-blooming 
flowers, and singing birds ; and all this without leaving 
the mainland of the United States ; but all this is avail- 
able only to that section of population who are looking 
for a speedy means of consuming money. 

The traditional Westerner who invaded one of those 
Florida hotels, the fame of which is almost as wide- 
spread as the English tongue, and, on leaving, returned his 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 339 

extortionate bill back to the desk clerk, saying, "Guess 
again, son, I got more'n that,'* still expresses the last cent 
expenditure to which your stay at the Ponce de Leon 
or the Royal Poinciana will tax the moderate income. 
These are earthly paradises into which none but the rich 
may enter. And all the tropical wizardry of surrounding 
has so helped the planning until the " biggest hotel in the 
world,'* at Palm Beech, is a gem in its setting, not a 
monstrosity. 

" Florida is a land of many colours — a rainbow land of 
green palms, red poincettas, blue waters, white beeches, 
and orange-groves like green fields sprinkled with gold 
dust,** begins one writer, who had set himself the task of 
sober recital of this land of Ponce de Leon ; and he con- 
tinues, " It is an ' Arabian Night's * dream of Aladdin 
palaces that gleam in gardens more fantastic than those 
of Babylon; and of a throng of princes and princesses 
who appear suddenly as if by magic every January and 
disappear mysteriously in April. It is a fantasy — a 
pageant — a new Egypt with more marvels than were ever 
created by a Pharaoh's fancy." 

One cannot write of the Florida resorts in anything 
but superlatives or blank verse. Their founding has the 
same association with stupendous commercialism and 
dreamy romance. That part of Florida which twenty - 
five years ago had nothing but climate and a sandy 
wilderness, has been transformed to a five-hundred-mile 
streak of terrestrial paradise by the enterprise and genius 
of one man. This is Henry M. Flagler. From the 
moment when he saw it, Florida seized upon Mr. Flagler's 
imagination. He was then a work-worn millionaire with 
thirty-five years of business building behind him ; but as 
he sat under the palm trees he forgot it all, and began 
a second career fully as romantic as that of Ponce de 
Leon, and happily much more successful. 

At the suggestion of a friend in Washington he had 



340 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

gone to St. Augustine to escape the seventy of a northern 
February, and he was so impressed by the unique charm 
of the place that he ordered a great hotel to be built there. 
Another friend lured him 260 miles farther south, to Palm 
Beach, which the delighted millionaire immediately began 
to transform into a garden of the gods. 

Palm Beach sprang in two winters full-fledged into 
the ranks of famous winter playgrounds. It should 
be stated that he had at first bought a railway that ran 
south from Jacksonville — a pitiful wire way of rust that 
lay forlorn and unprofitable. He relaid it as a toy — some 
say the dream castles at St. Augustine and Palm Beach 
were created to supply the traffic. But whatever the 
inspiration, they are dreams come true, while the railroad 
has stretched farther and farther south, until it now hems 
the entire east coast of Florida (and this state has, by 
the way, an area equal to combined New England), with a 
double thread of steel. Even to Miami, which lies near 
the extreme southern tip of the mainland of Florida, it is 
a notable line running through a tropical region which 
looks much more like Algiers or Egypt than like any 
other section of the United States. 

The inclusion of Miami into its chain of great hotel 
centres was characteristic. At the time of the great freeze 
in 1895, Mr. Flagler was standing amid the dead plants 
and flowers at Palm Beach when he was presented with 
a spray of perfect orange blossoms. He looked over the 
blackened orchard bloom about him. 

" Where did they come from ? " he asked. 

" From Biscayne County, nearly one hundred miles to 
the southward," came the reply. 

" What is there ? " 

" One of the most beautiful salt-water bays of the 
country." 

" How large is it ? " 

" About forty miles long, and from one to ten broad." 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 341 

" Is there any reason why our road cannot be extended 
into that country ? " 

" None at all." 

" How can one reach it now ? " 

"By two days' ride over a trail almost hub-deep in 
sand, and through an unbroken wilderness, or by a night's 
run down the coast in a yacht." 

On his immediate visit there, Mr. Flagler found the 
wonderful amber crystal waters of a bay sheltered by this 
only rock-bound portion of Florida, and a score or so of 
houses scattered along the Miami River. In one year his 
railroad had reached it, and the sixth of the great Florida 
hotels was in process of construction. There had sprung 
into existence another fairy-land, where hundreds of 
American women can now, each winter, trail Paris finery 
along the verandas and palm-shaded walks ; where tired 
American millionaires can find every inducement to 
relaxation in the out-of-door restaurants under the palm 
trees. 

From Miami southward the railroad becomes literally 
sea-going. A word-painter says of it : " As if it could 
resist the lure of the sea no longer, it leaves the land, and 
leaps straight out into the grey-blue waters of the Gulf of 
Mexico, linking a line of green islands together like a 
string of emeralds. One hundred and fifty miles in length 
and every mile a marvel ! " 

Some of the islands are tiny stepping-stones, and some 
of them are large and dense with tropical foliage — rubber 
trees draped with flowering ivy, shady lagoons tunnelling 
under this foliage and giving the lazy alligators a place to 
hide when the roar of the train frightens them. Immense 
soaring birds, the original aeroplanes, curve and circle 
overhead. And in the open sea between the islands, 
heavy-bodied ducks scurry off to a quieter feeding-ground ; 
tall white herons, like winged clothes-poles, fly from beside 
the track on either side ; fishes of many colours jump 



342 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

and splash in the water ; and far off on the horizon are 
the sails of ships which have not yet found out how to go 
to sea on tracks of steel." 

This nautical railroad has almost reached Key West — 
less than ninety miles from Havana — and from there the 
Pullman cars that have carried the tourist from New York 
will be floated across to Cuba on huge ferries and the chain 
of tropical wonderland will be complete. At present it 
must be confessed the five-hour sail from Key West to 
Cuba in steamships has much of the turbulence of crossing 
the English Channel. 

It is said that when the plans for the sea-going railway 
were placed before Mr. Flagler he studied them for a time. 
Finally he turned to his railway manager and asked — 

" Can you do this ? " 

" Yes," replied the railway manager. 

" Then do it," said Flagler. 

All the American business magnate asks is, that the 
proposed work shall be possible for human energy and 
brains to do. He has no fear of incidental difficulties. 
This empire builder of the South-west is now a remarkably 
young-old man of 79. Seventy years have passed since 
he was a country boy in New York state, accepting as a 
matter of necessity the hardships of the Northern winters ; 
to-day he lives in a marble castle at Palm Beach, while 
thousands of tourists are enjoying a semi-tropical winter 
in the wonderland he has opened to them. 

But greatly as Americans revel in the climate of this 
steam-heated state, it is not so much that they enjoy 
literally basking in the surroundings where Nature plays 
the tune of life softly and dreamily, as that Palm Beach 
and Miami have added a new diversion to society. As 
soon as the Christmas stock in the shops has been disposed 
of, the great display windows blossom with filmy " Palm 
Beach frocks." Straw hats displace the felts while there 
is yet snow on the ground ; tailors announce complete 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 343 

assortments of " linens, white serges, and pongees and other 
suitings suitable for the Florida season." Exhibitions of 
"imported hand-embroidered lingerie frocks and lace robes" 
are zealously patronized by women swathed in furs, and the 
modest-pursed outsiders without the circle of Palm Beach 
possibilities gaze longingly through frosted show windows 
at the flower-trimmed millinery and chiffon parasols and 
open-work hose, and console themselves with the assurance 
that complexions keep a good deal better in a cold winter 
climate — also there will ,be plenty of bargains after the 
Palm Beach exodus of city wealth has occurred. 

But the Florida resorts, if fashion ruled and luxury 
swathed, are a national asset, for Florida is the one place 
in America where the climate is absolutely conducive to 
relaxation. There out-door life, so neglected by nervous 
Americans, is imperative. Whether it be as far removed 
from the simple life as the donning in succession of five 
different and complex costumes a day, or as strenuously 
executed as tennis and golf — (for when the Northern 
courses are covered with snow, Florida's glisten as a green 
velvet quilt) — or bowling or beach automobiling will allow 
— it is primarily a holiday, a fiesta life so rare with 
strenuous Americans. 

The New York stock manipulator who arrives at St. 
Augustine looking as aged as the fragments of wall about 
that city dating from the Spanish days in Florida, a 
week later, in his white trousers and blue serge sack 
coat — inexorable orthodoxy of morning dress at Florida 
resorts — might be the grandson of that other care-worn 
personality. 

Of course, the gouty and over-weighted dowager type 
are there pursuing a futile Ponce de Leon quest by way of 
piazza-rockers and rolling-chairs and massage, but the 
impression one gets is of charmingly youthful women in 
their wonderful frocks sitting in dainty tea-houses beneath 
the feathery palms festooned with the lace scarfs of Spanish 



344 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

moss, or dancers gliding over the ball-rooms, which are 
practically open to the balmy night air ; of bronzed men 
returning from battling with the tarpon ("silver king " of 
the finny tribe often tipping the beam at 200 pounds), or 
subtle casting in fresh-water streams ; of a man and a 
maid strolling about the paths of the formal gardens, or 
the more lover-like in shrub- and vine-screened angle 
of the veranda table-land ; of those groves where the 
yellow fruit and the scented blooms hang side by side, for 
oranges ripen in the winter and at the same time the trees 
cover themselves with fragrant bridal wreaths of the next 
year's fruitage — in a word, the impression is that the place 
is magician-touched and that the spirit of youth has been 
found. 

"Predatory wealth" it may be, as our newspapers 
proclaim, but it is surely out of its lair. And to see the 
American who has slaved for his millions, hunting, fishing, 
loafing, cruising in a boat-house on summer seas, speeding 
in an automobile over ocean beaches as hard and smooth 
as a floor, is a disarming sight. He does not look the 
monster of worry and vengeance any more than the so- 
called Florida "cowboy" looks the weapon-bristling, 
desperate character the name is apt to suggest. The 
Florida cowboy is as near to inertia as any human type 
ever created. He himself always confesses that the others 
of his tribe are " plumb shif'less." And an over-fastidious 
tourist, objecting to the habits of the biting and stinging 
insects which naturally in such a semi-tropical climate 
have colonized every blade of grass with a tendency to 
incorporate themselves in the passer-by, received this 
contemptuous reply from his cowboy guide — 

" What's the use in namin' all them bitin* and stingin' 
critters, when I've lived here all my life an' hain't run up 
agin nary one of them ceptin', of cose, red bugs, an' 
moskitters, an' scorponiums (scorpions), an' sich trash that 
don' count only ter make a feller scratch an' cus." 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 345 

A curious feature in this millionaire winter playground 
is that on one of the line of coral islands at the Southern 
tip dwell the remnant of the Seminole Indians, among 
the most warlike and the most picturesque of the American 
tribe who successfully resisted expatriation to the Far 
West Government reservations. So Uncle Sam's newly 
rich children of his mature years have his first primitive 
sons cowering at the gate of their Hotel Paradise which 
was once his hunting-ground. 

While an exclusive villa colony is growing both at 
Palm Beach and at Miami, the hotel life predominates, 
and the resorts have not the socially " closed shop " 
attitude toward new-comers. " The price " is the requisite, 
and the cHques based on ultra-smartness or family are 
submerged by the crowds with "mere money" who 
throng through the doors of the mammoth hotels. At a 
I recent ball at one of these nearly 2000 people attended. 
The room, with porportions something like 200 feet long 
by 75 feet wide, was a huge bower of wistaria and palms 
through which some 7000 coloured incandescents glistened 
like jewels. Twice that number of people had that same 
day witnessed the races at Ormonde, where the beach 
admits of a score of automobiles running abreast in a 
straight-away course of nearly 20 miles. So nature and 
wealth help to while away the winter holiday. 

But while winter^resorting is the rich man's prerogative, 
the long summer vacation is interpreted as a necessity in 
every American family. In June the regular structure of 
American life is wholly broken up. " Vacation has become 
a fetish and vacation means family migration," explains one 
writer, which is quite true of everybody in the family 
except the husband and father. America fathers are never 
counted in the summer plans beyond figuring as the source 
of supply for the campaign. As the prime motive of the 
vacation seems to be change, not rest, the male stay-at- 
home population sometimes fares better than his migrated 



346 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

family, and I have known American wives coming back 
from the discomforts of the summer hotel and considering 
the husband supremely selfish in having absorbed city 
comforts afforded by fresh fruit and a soft bed in her 
absence. 

The interesting thing in this summer exodus is the 
surprisingly short time in which it has been evolved. 
Half a century ago it was known only to some of the 
richest people. A few very old and opulent families had 
country places on the Hudson ; in Boston the same class 
had summer homes at Nahant or in Pepperill ; the wealthy 
planters of the South came North to the hotels of Saratoga, 
Lake George, and Niagara, whither the vast majority of 
the fashionable Northern people also resorted. Now 
everybody goes somewhere. People from the mountains 
go to the seashore, and vice versa. Eastern people rush 
to the West. Western people come back Eastward — 
though it must be admitted that even now Western people 
do not summer outside their homes to at all the same 
extent as in the East — Southerners come North. It is a 
natural hegira, a flux of population and a craze for change. 
Summering was the primitive joke of the paragrapher and 
the caricaturist whose diagnosis of it is a disease described 
as "sestivitis." 

A few betake themselves to nooks and corners in the 
mountains, but it is not, as a rule. Nature's vernal call but 
the restriction of the purse which forms this choice. Good 
board on a farm can be had for £i 8j. a week, but there is 
scant love of nature of this serenity in the United States, 
and, as a rule, every effort will be made to afford the 
summer stay at a large boarding-house or flimsy hotel. 
They are all pretty much alike, these mountain and sea- 
side summer hotels, down to having the same number of 
feet of piazza, although it is always a little dearer at the 
seaside, where board at the average hotel is £^ a week, at 
the large boarding-house £2,. 



SUMMER AND WINTER RESORTS 347 

I have heard it said that there is one gossiper for every 
three feet of hotel piazza at the usual seaside resort, but 
I consider the estimate conservative. One wonders that 
there are not more cases of insanity directly attributable 
to this summer hotel life, where the feminine routine, day 
after day, is rocking and talking, and going in bathing and 
coming out to lie in the sand until the hair is dry ; a little 
nap, a little bridge, more rocking and talking, and then to 
bed. 

The young girl, however — the sun-burned girls in 
" sneakers " (rubber-soled gymnasium shoes) and woollen 
sweaters, with sailor necks, play with the college boys, also 
summering, likewise in these match-box hotels, also with 
their families, and if the liberty of comradeship does shock 
European standards of debutante propriety, I sometimes 
wonder whether any other young woman in the world 
looks as healthy and as if she were having as good a time. 

The summer cottage was at one time within the realm 
of possibility for even the moderate purse, and only the 
American woman's desire to get completely away from 
housekeeping voiced in the oft-heard protest, " I don't 
want to know what I am going to have to dinner until 
I sit down to it," prevented the average family from 
acquiring modest summer homes ; but the summer cottage 
in America, beginning as it did in the slightest and 
simplest of shanties, progressed toward those simulacra 
of homes, aptly called " shells," and gradually arrived at 
those picturesque structures elaborately decorated and 
furnished with all the modern conveniences in which one 
may spend two-thirds of the year and more of his income 
than one has a quiet conscience in doing. 

So the growth of the summer cottage settlements 
is slow. But the summer hotels spring up like mush- 
room growth, and streams of pleasure-seekers from all 
over the country converge towards each new crop. 
Incidentally there is no way that the sectional types of the 



348 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

United States may be so well studied as when found 
collected together in some of these popular centres of 
summer life. 

Again I urge that the foreigner who would distribute 
his time among half a dozen wisely selected summer 
resorts during these annual three months of extraordinary 
botdeversement, would find more American types flung 
indiscriminately before him and be saved the arduous 
pursuit of them when isolated in their natural haunts. 

As a demonstration of national characteristics, there is 
nothing in the country like an average summer resort. It 
is to be recommended above Broadway or the prairie. 



CHAPTER XV 
HOUSING THE NATION 

AN American can always take a joke on himself — if 
the laugh is sprung by an American. Criticism 
of America or Americans by an American is 
generally accepted as a family joke. But when a 
European waxes critical of his doings and possessions 
the American pride is stung. Yet we listen avidly for 
foreign comment, favourable or unfavourable, and the 
slightest caustic judgment of the foreigner will often 
bring action when the pounding of domestic arraignment 
has been smiled at indulgently. This has been particularly 
true in regard to the evolution and the reform of our 
architectural heights. 

Our office buildings, skyscrapers, or " skyscratchers," 
as Frenchmen call them, now take their place in the 
architecture of the world ; a place that was not allowed 
them, however, until the beauty of their real truth was 
discovered by the art critics of Europe who have visited 
our shores. 

It is hard to believe that scarcely a decade has passed 
since a distinguished American architect was guilty of the 
absurd remark that a building over seven stories high 
was not architecture. He was unable to throw off the 
European influence of low "monumental" architecture 
and, being exceedingly sensitive to European criticism, 
he and his imitators held that we should transplant bodily 

349 



350 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

the European street architecture to our American cities 
regardless of the fact that it would in no way fulfil our 
requirements. 

When, however, it was found impossible to harmonize 
European architecture to the new conditions of businessf 
geography of our cities, all ingenuity was exercised for cJ 
time in disguising the height of our buildings, or, techni-| 
cally speaking,* in reducing the apparent height, which was) 
then almost universally admitted to be excessive and 
contrary to all the canons of high art. 

One method which was supposed to accomplish this 
disguise was the exaggeration of established European 
motives and combinations in the endeavour to suggest by 
association that the American office building, like the 
European palace, was only three stories high, when in' 
reality it was twenty. Another scheme was to assume 
that each story was but the expression of a one-story 
European building. So we have in some of our earlier 
efforts towards height, ibuildings and parts of buildings 
piled one upon the other, tier after tier, starting, perhaps, 
with the Grecian temple and crowned with a chateau of 
Valois. 

This was followed by a more truthful expression, but 
still clinging to the monumental idea. Classic forms, such 
as the arch and column, whose true functions were lost 
sight of, were aimlessly tossed about the fronts of our 
buildings ; and we still see this three-quarter-engaged 
structure clinging to these fronts like painted architecture 
on the ceiling of foreign cathedrals. 

Then came the periodical visit of a foreign critic. This 
time it happened to be a French architect, who told us 
through his interviews with pressmen, that the facades 
of our sky-scrapers were nonsensical attempts at Greek, 
Roman, Gothic and French baroque art, and the average 
New Yorker, who is, of course, the most modest person on 
the face of the globe, except, perhaps, his English cousin, 



HOUSING THE NATION 351 

, went about loudly apologizing for the skyscrapers, the 
, narrow streets and jagged " squares," and high bridges 
and the overhead street cars. 

But these things being the necessities of the city's life 
— great ocean liners demanding an arched way up to the 
side of New York, and the pressure of people and business 
giving space in the air a utilitarian value — the condition 
continued to be met by the high bridges and skyscrapers, 
and suddenly our architects realized that inasmuch as 
the skyscraper is a sincere expression of our conditions 
and needs, it is a true expression of legitimate architecture. 

They awoke to the value of our invention, but they 
also awoke to the fact that, not having anything " monu- 
mental " inside, plastering a so-called " monumental " front 
on to a building which is a symbol of utility, would not 
accomplish the effect which we sought. Then we began 
to set about making our public buildings more truthful 
expressions on the outside of what was inside. We began 
to say, " Conditions make a style, and not architects or the 
architectural fashion-plates of any architectural school. 
Our conditions in America to-day are different from any 
that have ever existed before. Why, then, should we be 
carried off our feet by the waves of the Beaux Arts to the 
extent of a Roman colonnade against the wall of an office 
building, or Italian palaces as the basis for shoe-shops, or 
Spanish cathedrals converted into hippodromes — all of 
which has been perpetrated in American cities. 

With this realization of the incongruity of classic 
ornamentation on utilitarian form, the worst of our 
illogical public buildings were doomed. Gradually we 
have worked out to our present general plan of tall office 
buildings; consisting of an ornamental entrance base, a 
column whose great height is emphasized by means of 
vertical lines, and the whole composition monotonously 
honeycombed with windows lighting offices of the most 
rentable size. 



352 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

We frankly admitted that the corners were constructed 

of iron, around which masonry was placed for the sole pur- 
pose of protecting the iron. We made buildings mercantile 
in their inception ; a sincere expression of our requirements 
and our practical American needs. We set aside European 
theories of design when they interfered with a rational 
and logical solution of our local problems. 

But we still stood apologetic before European standards. 
To be sure, we now expressed our doubts not as, " It's 
pretty, but is it art } " but, " They're ugly, but oh, the 
amount of business we can do in them, and besides, we 
had to have them ! " 

But again came the visiting critics of Europe, and this 
time they discovered that these big buildings, with their 
skeletons built on the truth, and from utilitarian impetus 
were, without in their treatment losing in any degree the 
appearance of usefulness, expressing in their towering height 
the lightness and grace so beautifully exemplified by some 
of the cathedrals of Europe. 

Next the " famous foreign architects " who came to 
scoff remained long enough to treat us to rhapsodical 
approval like the following, which was the spontaneous 
ebullition of a noted visitor from Italy : " The majestic 
buildings which mutually challenge each other to grander 
heights for the conquest of heaven and infinity ; the daring 
bridges which join Manhattan to Brooklyn, impress and 
sadden one ; sadden because, before such greatness, we feel 
how small we are. . . . The famous pyramids of Egypt, 
these are imposing through a majesty that is not unlike 
the impression aroused by the * Flatiron Building ' in New 
York City" 

Then, even business-absorbed America awoke to the 
fact that in its own way New York is just as beautiful, 
just as picturesque, at the present time, as London or 
Paris, or any other European city ; that its high bridges, 
the colossal skyscrapers and enormous waterways, the 



HOUSING THE NATION 353 

huge factories, are really pictorial in themselves, that a 
new sublimity lies in the majesty of mass, in aspiring lines 
against the upper sky — above all, in the suggested power 
and energy of American life. 

We are, moreover, beginning to realize the possibilities 
of an architectural treatment of the sky-line of these 
buildings. The flat roofs, with their accumulation of 
junk, consisting of water tanks, ventilating flues, boiler 
I flues, etc. (which features for some unknown reason have 
heretofore been considered invisible), are now being rele- 
gated to the past ; and instead of being the most glaring 
eflacement of New York City, have given reason for, 
and assistance to, the composition of sky-line much more 
attractive than that of London or Paris, taken as a whole. 
Other American cities without the geographical pinch 
of New York's contour, have accepted the skyscraper 
architecture for their business centres, and while the streets 
flanked by these mighty cliffs are not as canon-like as the 
narrow ways of New York, there is always the feeling of 
a vast human pulsing and roar, which I believe is as much 
the subjective result of mammoth, congested architecture as 
it is of objective realities. Englishmen always remark on 
the deafening roar of Chicago and New York, but except 
for the rattle and pounding of the overhead trains through 
the centre of the cities, and the fact that street traffic 
is not as well disposed of in America as in London, I 
believe the bulk of sound is less in lower Broadway or 
on Chicago's State Street than it is along the Strand. But 
the height of the buildings gives a sense of noise being 
pressed down on one. Also the thought of the number of 
people who spend the daylight hours in every one of these 
enormous buildings is oppressive. 

The fact that below certain stories in the skyscraper 
only during certain hours of the day does sunlight penetrate 
gives hint that not all the nation's ill-health due to con- 
gested living comes from the tenements. Concerning the 
2 A 



354 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

enormous tides that sweep in and out of the great down-l 
town office buildings some interesting figures have beenj 
gathered. Between eight in the morning and two in the 
afternoon, 1 1,037 persons entered or left one of the Chicago 
skyscrapers, while in the fifteen minutes of greatest travel 
827 went in or out — an average of fifty-five a minute. In 
New York it was found that 18,795 persons entered or 
left a typical office building in the course of a day's 
business hours, and here between one o'clock and a quarter 
past precisely 1022 persons passed in or out — an average 
of sixty-eight to the minute. 

These sound like figures taken from the gate receipts 
of an exhibition, instead of the daily flow of workers in one 
office building. It was learned, too, that for only three- 
quarters of an hour during the twenty-four does sunlight 
penetrate into rooms of a building on a north and south 
street twenty-five feet wide, provided the roof of the opposite 
building is six stories higher than the rooms thus darkened. 
If the street be forty feet wide, there is sunshine for two 
hours in the opposite rooms six stories below the top of 
the skyscraper, while nine stories from the top the sunlight 
comes only for an hour. 

Realizing that direct sun is necessary to kill germs, it 
is a regrettable conclusion that many of the occupants must 
pick up the germs of their diseases while at work in these 
highest expressions of American economic resourcefulness, 
the modern, perfectly equipped skyscrapers. 

But, of course, the greatest penalty for congested living 
is paid in America, as elsewhere, by the poor. The lower 
East Side of New York is the most densely populated spot 
in the habitable globe. In the most congested quarter of 
Bombay the density is computed 434 persons to the acre, 
in Prague 485, in Paris 434, in London 365, in Glasgow 
350, in Calcutta, long considered the prototype of " teeming 
vermin humanity," it is 204. But in one ward in New 
York City there are 986 persons to every one of its 32 acres. 



HOUSING THE NATION 355 

In one square of crowded New York there may be found 
population equal to that of a good-sized village. Lower 
New York is, in fact, like Whitechapel multiplied by itself, 
and expressed in terms of many nations and races. 

Americans are always shocked by the little old 
ramshackle houses in which the London poor are herded. 
But I should doubt whether, unspeakable as the conditions 
of dirt and crowding are in Whitechapel landmarks, the 
vast tenements, both those facing on the street and the rear 
tenements, in which the poor of lower New York are housed 
are not far worse in many essentials. 

Americans think that a fire-escape and an air-shaft are 
the only necessary insignia of humanitarian progress in 
housing the poor, but the fire-escapes on the tenements 
are always clogged with bedding in the summer, and made 
into trash-bins in winter, while the air-shaft in the average 
tenement is closed at top and bottom, a parody on the 
name. 

The ** double-decker " tenement house, of which about 
2000 were constructed annually in the city of New York 
until the last few years, was described as follows in the 
report of the Tenement House Committee, whose recom- 
mendation ended in prohibiting their further construction — 

" It is the one hopeless form of tenement house con- 
struction. It cannot be well ventilated, it cannot be well 
lighted. It is not safe in case of fire. It is built upon a 
lot 25 feet wide by 100 or less in depth, with apartments 
for four families in each story. This necessitates the 
occupation of from S6 to 90 per cent, of the lot's depth. 
The stairway made in the centre of the house, and the 
necessary walls and partitions, reduce the width of the 
middle rooms (which serve as bedrooms for at least two 
people each) to nine feet at the most, and a narrow light- 
and air-shaft, now legally required in the centre of each 
side wall, will further lessen the floor space of these middle 
rooms. Direct light is only possible for the rooms at the 



356 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

front and rear. The middle rooms must borrow what h'ght 
they can from dark hallways, the narrow shafts, and the 
rear rooms. Their air must pass through other rooms or 
the tiny shafts, and cannot but be contaminated before it 
reaches them. A five-story house of this character contains 
apartments for i8 or 20 families — a population frequently 
amounting to lOO people, and sometimes increased by 
boarders or lodgers to 150 or more." 

Laws now fix the percentage of the area of a lot which 
may be built upon, the height of the building, and the 
provisions as to fire-proof construction. But laws that 
look well on paper often are difficult of execution, and while 
technically in definition many of the newer tenements 
escape the classification of " double-decked," still, on viewing 
the existing conditions of life below their roofs, one is 
vividly reminded of Dante. 

The average rent paid in the New York tenement is 
about $4.92 a month, or $1.78 per room. 

As illustrative of the horror and darkness of this 
tenement existence take one block or square in the famous 
East Side. This is by no means the worst block in the 
city, but it presents a considerable variety of conditions. 
It is made up of 39 tenement houses, containing 605 different 
apartments, inhabited by 2781 people, of whom 466 are 
children under five years of age. There is not a bath in 
the entire block. There are 441 dark rooms, having no 
ventilation to the outer air, and no light or air except that 
derived from other rooms ; 635 rooms get their sole light 
and air from dark, narrow air-shafts, and there are ten rear 
tenements. But in another square, where the double-decker 
type of tenement prevails, there are herded over 4990 
people. 

Under these conditions it can be realized that the 
mere ordinary processes of living are fraught with social 
friction at almost every point ; the drawing of a pail of 
water, the plaything of the children, the simplest and most 



HOUSING THE NATION 357 

ordinary human functions, become the occasions of strife 
and discord. 

And so we have the noise of strife and brawl and 
hysteria continually about our tenements. But in spite of 
the fact that thousands of people from these tenements 
throng the streets — an army of poverty that makes them 
almost impassable ; in spite of the fact that thousands more 
people are living there than land and atmosphere can safely 
sustain, that the limits of criminal insanitation are reached 
and passed ; that thousands of babies each year are defeated 
in the unequal struggle for existence ; that in the scorching 
American summer children are kept out in the air until 
after midnight with all the conditions of nervous tension 
of distracting sounds and unwholesome sights ; in spite of 
the fact that our tenement herding renders independence 
and isolation of family life impossible — despite all this 
depressing spectacle, there is not, for some reason, about 
the American tenement house life as in the slums of London 
or Glasgow, the feeling that these people are " in crime and 
black ignorance, and in foul conditions of existence, in a 
life purely animal, forsaken of God and man." 

An influx of cosmopolitan misery, with its waifs and 
strays and failures and outcasts from Europe, has filled 
America with embarrassing problems, but there is not that 
prevailing sense of resigned, apathetic destitution and 
degradation among the poor, not the feeling that the vices 
are in the warp and woof of the low life here as in 
large European cities. 

So many do rise from poverty that even the addition of 
75,000 foreign paupers to the tenement districts in the last 
five years cannot kill the subtle spirit of optimism about 
the most crowded parts of the East Side of New York City 
as compared with the poor of London's worst area. 

The poor in American cities do not, as a rule, cherish 
the freedom of being dirty. Among our tenements, facts 
disgraceful to civilization are continually brought to light, 



358 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

but these are almost always founded on the wretched 
insanitation of the buildings, and about themselves the 
poor are unquestionably tidier in America than in England. 
There was much ironic comment on our tenement people 
who stored coal in the bath-tubs a philanthropic landlord 
had installed, but until recently the construction of 
tenements with unventilated rooms that invited over- 
crowding, with school sinks and no running water, of rear 
tenements where living was virtually in a cage, passed 
uncensured, and the marvel that even in these degenerate 
conditions there was a general effort to " slick up " the 
wretched premises and their persons among the American 
poor is always remarked by those who have investigated 
the condition of the city poor abroad. 

Neglect and greed have been at the bottom of all 
tenement house problems in America. The real relation 
of the housing problem and its direct bearing upon civic 
welfare are only just beginning to be appreciated. For 
we have not been building cities long — not such cities as 
we now have, and, as some one has said of our civilization 
in general, "We have been like carpenters, exceedingly 
busy at hammering and sawing without knowing what we 
are making. We have the piano in the cellar, the laundry 
tubs in the front bedroom, and the Persian rug on the 
dining-room table." And the question of housing our 
poor has been one of the points we failed in our optimism 
to give logical proportion to. 

Many of the earliest efforts at amelioration were 
philanthropic, and hence the problem became classified in 
the field of charity rather than in the field of economics 
and business. Into the breach stepped unscrupulous 
characters who widened to the utmost the horizon of 
exploitation in the housing of the poor until tenement 
house business was long under the shadow of disrepute. 
Tenements were built as speculation and immediately sold 
to Shylocks, who in many instances made a rental profit 



HOUSING THE NATION 359 

from these miserable buildings as high as 25 per cent. 
Christian men of business felt it not entirely respectable 
to become tenement owners. 

Now, however, although the recognition of the land 
problem as fundamental to the housing problem as it is 
accounted in the earnest effort of England and Continental 
countries, to acquire tracts of land so cheap that working- 
men can afford to own or rent sanitary homes, has been 
almost ignored in America, still, we have come to the real- 
ization that these tenement homes of our poor should not 
be allowed to accumulate like bits of driftwood in our 
slums, but should be made as liveable as it is possible for 
accommodation for such congested and cheap living to be. 
While there is no municipal ownership housing in America, 
there is municipal supervision which is made as effective as 
political wires may carry the humanitarian current. In 
New York, Chicago, and other large cities there is a 
Tenement House Committee appointed to superintend the 
construction of every tenement erected, from examining 
the specifications to inspecting the completed building, 
and tenements already built are repaired and reconstructed 
as far as possible to conform to new tenement laws, under 
the action of this committee. In one year 5760 tenements 
were reported under repair or construction by the Tenement 
House Committee in New York. 

A revolution in city building has begun, and the more 
optimistic claim that before the end we will look upon 
such tenements as we accepted for years as we look upon 
the old-fashioned country houses composed of two up- 
rights, four wings, three " lean-to's," a wood-shed, and a 
summer kitchen, built a section at a time without the aid 
of an architect. At least the periodic round-up of tenement 
horrors and the reports of the tenement house committees 
would seem to be taking effect, and since truth always 
could go down four times and still swim ashore, it is quite 
possible that American cities can really grasp the close 



36o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

relation between bad housing and bad health, bad morals 
and bad citizenship, and that the model tenements will in 
time supersede entirely the old death-traps with their 6i 
per cent, death rate. The foreign visitor, if he ventures 
into the reeking depths of New York's slum life, will no 
doubt feel that the millennium date is more certain. 

It. is a curious fact that when the Tenement House 
Committee offered a special prize for a suitable plan to the 
typical New York City lots, 25 feet by 100 feet, a French- 
man who has never seen New York won the prize. 

One thing should be borne in mind in regard to 
America's interest in her slums — America finds in them 
only foreign faces. 

I suppose it may be accepted as broadly true that the 
people of East London, notwithstanding a cosmopolitan 
stream of immigration, are essentially English in character. 
It is a city of English working-people, and the Englishman 
sees his fellow-countryman not only in every grade of labour 
down to the unskilled navvy and the idle, thriftless 
"casual," but even among such human wrecks from the 
registered lodging-houses in Dorset Street, or as one sees 
basking in the sun on the benches about Christ's Church 
in Spitalfields ; while the great mass of New York's East 
Side has not been over here one generation and I have an 
idea that the problem of housing the poor and derelict has 
not become poignant earlier to America because of this 
very condition ; that only to an own mother are the 
individuals in this primary department of society interesting, 
and America came to her responsibility in the proper 
housing of this foreign multitude only in the spirit of 
dutiful guardianship of a foster-parent. 

Would, for instance, Germany and Austria have been as 
advanced in their efforts to solve the housing problems for 
the poor — in making surplus purchases of tracts of land for 
park purposes in the city slums ; in buying land in outlying 
districts to control speculation and in all the municipal 



HOUSING THE NATION 361 

building they have done — if their poor as a class had 
been without native blood and a constantly increasing 
foreign horde ? 

As is quite characteristic of American individualism, all 
the " model tenement " experiments on any large scale 
have been the work of wealthy men quite independent 
of municipal control. So are the working-men's hotels 
scattered over this city, while the unnumbered lodging- 
houses whose barrack halls with shelf beds in three tiers one 
[ sees in a monotonous flashing by from the windows of a 
down-town elevated train, are matters of individual enter 
prise on the part of gentlemen at the other end of the 
social scale from the millionaire philanthropist. 

In Washington, and the cities further south, the 
tenement is replaced by shacks and cabins in alleys, and 
while squalor is thus hidden from the casual observer, it is 
there, and generally coupled with vice. Some of these 
alley structures are noisome and foul beyond the worst 
tenement conditions, and while such apologies for shelter 
are to a great extent occupied by idle and dissolute 
coloured people, some of the tenants, although ignorant and 
low in the scale of intelligence, are honest and hard working. 
Laundresses bring to such places baskets of soiled clothes 
from the homes of the well-to-do and return them to their 
owners apparently clean, but possibly soiled with the germs 
of some infectious disease. A charity worker in Wash- 
ington, remonstrating with an old negress on the fearful 
plight of her particular portion of an alley hovel, received 
the complacent reply, " Ain't it turrible though ! Why, my 
ole marse wouldn't ha' kep his horse stabled in sich a place.'* 
Children grow up in such shacks, and a certain proportion 
of the girls go into domestic service and learn something 
of civilized methods of living, but the tendency of such 
surroundings is, of course, in the direction of vice and 
immorality. 

Unfortunately, at the national capital, as in many 



362 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

other cities, regulations designed to prevent the erection of 
unsanitary dwellings were not enacted until the city had 
reached considerable proportions, and neglect had already 
given rise to conditions discreditable to the city and 
injurious to the sanitary interests of its inhabitants. In 
one of her concealed slums, Washington still has rows of 
dilapidated sheds which were erected during the Civil War 
as barracks, and have been occupied by coloured people of 
the lowest class ever since. 

Americans are always surprised to hear the terms 
" flat " and "apartment " used interchangeably in England, 
for in America there is a wide gap of social prestige 
between them. As the presence of private baths dis- 
tinguishes a flat from the tenement, so the presence of a 
passenger lift may be said in a general way to decide 
when you may say you live in an " apartment," and be 
offended if any one else refers to it as a " flat." I know an 
Englishwoman in Washington who sent out cards for a 
musicale shortly after her arrival in this country, and gave 
serious offence by directing those to the society folks who 
prided themselves on putting up at the smartest apart- 
ment house in town as " such and such flats." In fact, it 
is safer to call everything that is not a tenement house an 
" apartment," if you are talking to an occupant, since the 
dividing line between " flat " and " apartment " wavers at 
times, distinction being contingent also on the fineness of 
detail and the position of the house in the city, and the 
occupants of any " flat " verging to the decorative always 
want it to be known as '' an apartment." The best apart- 
ments are arranged in suites of six to fifteen rooms and 
several baths. In New York an apartment covering a 
whole floor in the apartment house is sometimes bought 
outright, just as a house would be to secure a home. 
Apartments rent from ^120 to ^5000 a year; flats from 
about £48 to £g6. 

A young German attach^ looking up quarters in 




Vs^.v ^- (ffh^^ 







HOUSING THE NATION 3^3 

Washington asked what the significance of the mysterious 
'' A. M. I. " appearing in all advertisements of apartments 
was, and when I reported *'all modern improvements," 
he intimated that it was just like Americans to claim every- 
thing, but when I asked for the German equivalent in 
notices of vacant flats he thought a moment, and then 
replied that the English translation would be "all the 
comforts of the new time," and he did not see anything 
humorous in that. 

The American "all modern improvements" is no 
empty claim either. In even cheap flats it usually means 
gas range, steam or hot-water heating, warm and cold 
water in the bathroom and kitchen, a freight lift to bring 
supplies from the basement, and finally, what all American 
flat dwellers bank heavily upon, an ornate entrance to the 
building. 

It is a very poor flat that has not a bathroom the size 
of a small sleeping-room and floored and wainscoted with 
tiles, with a porcelain lined bath-tub and exposed nickel 
plumbing. The kitchen is covered with a patent composi- 
tion warmer than tiles, and there is generally a four-foot 
wainscoting of wood. In the flat, as elsewhere in America, 
the fact that trained servants are rare has been taken into 
account, and the latest labour-saving devices simplify the 
work for servantless housekeeping. 

An Englishwoman, in looking over a flat renting for 
^10 a month far up town in New York City, complained 
that it would take a course of instruction before she could 
master all the "Yankee methods" provided to simplify 
living there, but six months later, when her husband's 
business took them to Germany, her letters from Berlin 
were one long wail for the comfort of her American flat, a 
description of which caused her German landlady to 
intimate that she must have discovered some hitherto 
unpublished chapters of the Grimm Brothers. 

The rent of flats in America is remarkably moderate 



364 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

when one considers the expense of installing these con- 
veniences. When friends return to tell of the slight drain 
on the pocket-book of a flat in Berlin or Paris compared 
with an American apartment, it is a pretty safe deduction 
that they have been content to live in those cities where 
they were unknown, in quarters that they would con- 
sider impossible in their home city, and to eliminate all the 
luxuries which go with the apartment in America. 

The American landlord is very lenient and very 
accommodating. It is taken for granted that the flat or 
the house will be re-papered for each new tenant, and no 
strict inventory of the condition of unfurnished premises is 
made before the tenant takes possession, it being the 
tenant who takes note and asks for necessary improve- 
ments. A friend who rented an apartment in Paris was 
charged one franc for every spot in the parquetry floor 
during her occupancy, whereas in America there is 
apparently no redress for the landlord when plumbing is^ 
disordered by a tenant's carelessness, or holes made in the 
wall plastering by the American infants terribles. In fact, \ 
he is expected to repair such damages immediately and 
no questions asked. The concierge, or janitor, of an ! 
American apartment house may be, as he is always 
cartooned in the American joke, a czar in his way, but 
Europeans look aghast at the arrogance and the pre- 
rogatives of the tenant under the American house-renting 
system. In one thing the proprietor has his rights 
defined. Any improvement made by the tenant to his 
property, such as a window seat or folding table in the 
pantry, immediately becomes a part of the property, and 
any tenant who, on vacating, attempts to remove such 
additions is liable to prosecution. Nowadays, in most 
apartments as well as flats the proprietor holds the 
privilege of inspecting all apartments by the proxy of an 
expert on verminology — technically known as "the bug 
man." These inspections are made regularly, and while 



HOUSING THE NATION 365 

esented at times by tenants new to the custom, the result 
'^^s that enormous apartment houses are kept immune 
'rem the pests one careless housekeeper might be re- 
sponsible for. This may be taken as a reflection on the 
American housekeeper, or as an expression of up-to-date 
'nethods, but it is becoming more and more general, and I 
aave been in apartments abroad the liveableness of which 
would have been enhanced by such practice. 
! Expensive apartments add to the " modern conveni- 
fences " of the flat a safe built in the wall, a cold storage 
toom, connexion with the vacuum-cleaning apparatus, 
'electricity for cooking and lighting, filtered water, drying 
apparatus for the laundry, and a roof garden. There is 
'usually a cafe, so that housekeeping is optional. Thirty 
lyears ago such apartment houses were exotic in America, 
'and even now, when they are plentiful enough, and still 
going up at a remarkable rate, it takes a goodly income to 
run a manage in one. They are occupied largely by the 
class whose ambition formerly was to live in one of the 
rectangular blocks of three-story houses, literal miles of 
which stretch along our streets. In New York they are 
brown stone fronts ; in Philadelphia, red brick with solid 
white shutters ; in both Philadelphia and Baltimore a few 
glaring white marble steps seem to have represented the 
acme of elegance in exterior ornamentation ; Washington 
runs to Roman brick *' stone trimmed " ; and so the 
monotonous types mark each city. Still, personally, I 
prefer the monotonous massive brown stone block flanking 
of a New York street to the groups of houses in London 
that have individuality but are just odd enough to be 
ugly. 

The interior of all older New York houses, however, 
seems to have been designed by the same man, at the same 
time, and by a man whose idea of architecture evidently 
was conformity and uniformity and nothing beyond. I 
can remember a youth spent in one of a row of thirty 



366 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



,1 



block-houses, the interiors of which were as characterless 
as the exteriors, so that the occupant had to look twice to 
make sure whether he was in his own black walnut and 
green dining-room or in his neighbour's. 

This older "block-house," which still constitutes the 
main type of individual dwelling in New York, was built 
with the high " stoop " and the floor on a level with the 
front door, consisted of two drawing-rooms, or what is 
known as "double parlours," separated by folding doors, 
the dining-room and kitchen being below in a sort of sub- 
basement. As the descent to this basement dining-room 
was usually through an enclosed stairway of Stygian sug- 
gestion, and the windows of the room were always covered 
with heavy ornamental grating and a heavy iron gate 
guarded the lower entrance outside, the general impres- 
sion was that of a sunny little breakfast-room in the 
Bastile. 

The high stoop is undoubtedly a relic of the Dutch 
occupancy of New York, but the basement dining-room 
is a feature of which many older London houses are guilty. 
The more expensive homes in American cities are now 
built with what is known as the English basement, the 
entrance being on the street level and the drawing-room j 
and dining-room or formal suite given full sway in the 
floor above the entrance. 

There is, however, unfortunately, a design for city homes 
on a cheaper scale which must have come originally from 
the drawing board of someoverworked speculator's architect, 
and specious as it is, it has gained ground so as to be an 
accepted convention in all our cities. It is generally con- 
structed on an i8 or 20-foot lot and is of the "stoop" 
variety, but in order to obtain the effect of the foyer or 
centre hall, as it is found logically in the English basement 
house, the drawing-room is reduced to a cubby hole at one 
side of the door. Back of this comes the square hall, which 
is clear waste of space, since it is too small for a room and 



HOUSING THE NATION 367 

too large to be treated merely as a hall, and behind this is 
a cramped dining-room. If the family is small, a room in 
Ithe second story may be used as a sitting-room, but if the 
bedrooms are all in demand, one of them or the absurd 
" parlour " is the only gathering place for the family. It 
is a showy type of cheap house, however, and its popularity 
is unquestioned, particularly in the cities of secondary size, 
where rows upon rows of them rise every year, and the 
" For Rent " signs are all down before the plastering is dry, 
and the first occupants have put up their curtains while 
the carpenters are still pounding or gluing the cheap 
woodwork. 

Individual homes, even of the shoddy and platitudinous 
architecture, are, however, preferable to the flat, and while 
the apartment house has been hailed in America as the 
solution of the problem in city habitation of housing 
the greatest number of people at a minimum rental, there 
is every effort away from the city's centre to obtain in- 
dependence in living. To this end the two-family house 
was introduced. Each of these houses is two stories, and 
each floor consists of an independent flat of five or six 
rooms. Each flat has a separate entrance from the street, 
a back garden, a small cellar, and an exit to the alley in 
the rear. That is, there are two independent homes under 
one roof, which have nothing in common, with the un- 
pleasant features of living in a crowded flat or tenement 
eliminated and yet the same economy of rent and main- 
tenance possible. 

Washington has made a notable experiment with two 
family houses for the day labourer and small artisan. It 
was found that from £2 to £2 \6s. a month was being 
paid as rent for the crazy, four-room shacks which stand 
crookedly along some of the best residence streets and so 
disfigure the capital, and five years ago a building company 
put up several hundred two-flat houses to rent for practically 
the same and gave the tenants a sanitary and convenient 



368 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

home in exchange. This was no charitable enterprise, and 
the business instinct proved so true that in the five years 
1748 two-family houses have been added to the experi- 
ment, thus providing shelter for 3496 families, and invest- 
ment in two-family houses is now considered as safe as 
Government bonds. 

For instance, under the system, one month's rent in 
each year is devoted to interior repairs. If no repairs are 
needed a rebate is made of the entire month's rent. The 
tenant has thus a special inducement to take care of his 
flat, and when repairs are needed, he has the choice of 
making them himself or of reporting them to the agent, 
who has them made and charges the cost against the 
rebate. The tenant certifies in the bill that the repairs 
have been made and are satisfactory. At the end of 
eleven months the agent inspects the flat and causes all 
necessary repairs to be made ; whatever balance remains 
after paying for these repairs constitutes the rebate to be 
deducted from the twelfth month's rent. This method 
ensures excellent care of the premises, as it is in the interest 
of the tenant to make the bill for repairs as low as possible, 
because it comes out of his " rebate." On the other hand, 
the agent of the company insists that all repairs must be 
made before the balance, if any, from the twelfth month's 
rent is paid to the tenant. 

When Mark Twain exclaimed : " Whoever heard of a 
man reared in a steam-heated flat amounting to anything ! " 
there were those who took it seriously. 

Amateur sociologists, whose outlet of conviction is the 
anonymous communication to a newspaper, explained 
that the small flat had rescued many Americans from the 
boarding-house habit, and that this prevalence of boarding- 
house life among our married people had been one of the 
worst symptoms of our anti-domesticity. 

The humourist, viewing the tempest he had aroused, 
again spoke : If it could be proved that George Bernard 



HOUSING THE NATION 369 

Shaw had been brought up in an apartment, he would 
withdraw his criticism. Then even the amateur sociologist 
subsided. 

Perhaps, however, one might take seriously the word of 
our foreign critics who have frequently noted the tendency 
of American women to consider the care of the household 
a burden, and who now point to the numerous " apartment 
hotels," the so-called " family hotels," in our cities as the 
most dangerous enemy of American domesticity. One 
critic speaks of them as "big, bold, twentieth-century 
boarding houses," and of the women who live in them as 
" sacrificing the dignity of their lives and their effective 
influence over their husbands and their children." 

As the first law of the apartment hotel is " no children 
allowed," this latter danger would seem to be eliminated 
and the natural transgression of ex-President Roosevelt's 
anathema substitued. 

The real menace of the apartment hotel in our housing 
problem is that a cheap, flimsy type is constantly growing 
in our large cities, and that they are filled with young 
married people who seek in this ostentatious, showy style 
of living to keep up the pace of self-indulgence and the 
so-called social position each knew before marriage. 

The architecture of these cheap apartment hotels seems 
designed in ostentation and pretentiousness. The archi- 
tecture of the ordinary apartment or flat has come to be 
an accepted convention expressing the utilitarian, and 
resulting in something like a type, generally six or seven 
stories high, with double swells of bow windows up each 
side and built of light stone and red brick, and, alas, 
umbrageous tin cornices which the facility and cheapness 
of the material leads designers to bloat. However, from 
the " fancy tops " in sheet metal of the tenement houses of 
the lower East Side to the billionaire district, there is 
always this tendency in America to translate stone into 
terms of sheet iron. 

2 B 



370 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

But egregious and peculiar to itself is the apartment 
hotel. It has the most dropsical effect proper to sham 
material ; but it, moreover, lends itself to the expression of 
all forms and ages of architectural detail. I remember 
speculating upon the purpose of the architect in placing a 
tin balustrade parapet on top of a limestone front broken 
out in a rash of Juliet balconies, but I was told that it was 
to make it look " Parisian," and, being a woman with due 
reverence for that magic word, I reasoned no further. 
Another apartment hotel in New York has a tier of 
columns, hanging like Mohammed's coffin upon its facade, 
and a series of minarets like irregular teeth as its crown. 
There is no architecture in America so abortive as the 
usual apartment hotel. 

One point upon which all apartment hotels coincide is 
the gorgeous entrance hall. Here marble, and mirrors 
and bizarre furniture (generally of a sort of mistaken 
Elizabethan type), and tapestries and tin armour, con- 
sort in weird juxtaposition, and the cheap lace curtains 
of the reception-room and restaurant always have the 
monogram and crest (?) of the establishment woven in 
the centre. 

As to the interior arrangement, the apartment hotel 
averages seventy-five apartments to a building, with rooms 
arranged en suite — usually two rooms and a bath — the 
furniture brought in by the tenant. The poorest rooms 
are rented single, and in some of the more expensive 
apartment hotels there are suites of three, four, and five 
rooms and several baths. In these, too, instead of the 
usual public dining-room, the management makes arrange- 
ments for serving elaborate meals simultaneously in private 
dining-rooms all over the building. 

Such an apartment hotel will have for residents people 
with country places who pass seven or eight months of the 
year in the country, retaining their quarters in the apart- 
ment hotel for use when they run up to the city ; also by 



HOUSING THE NATION 37 1 

people well off, who like hotel life but wish to reduce hotel 
publicity to its lowest terms. 

These constitute but a small class, however ; and a 
similar proportion of apartment hotel dwellers are either 
" business " or " social " Bohemians : the Americans whose 
business interests keep them constantly moving, and who 
like to have a feathered nest in the heart of some large 
city to fall into ; and that type of take-no-thought-of-the- 
morrow, comfortably-fixed Americans who spend money 
ireely and want to be situated convenient for pleasure and 
business without the bugbear of housekeeping — all these 
find their domestic solution in the apartment hotel. 

The popular idea concerning many of these apartment 

hotels is that they are occupied by the class demanding 

I more licence than the ordinary hotel or bachelor apartment 

'can supply, but as an actual fact they rarely shield anything 

worse than a desire to shirk the servant problem, the price 

I of coal, or the machinations of the beef trust. The ordinary 

resident naturally is not a very domestic person. He likes 

the life in which the restaurant and theatres play leading 

{ parts — and such a class does exist in spite of foreign portraits 

I of our national life as a prolonged business debauch — but he 

!is likely to be more domestic than our smug suburbanite 

j suspects. The menace of the apartment is more insidious 

than the straightforward question of morals, as the public 

judges ; it lies in the fact that thousands of tenants are 

I moving into the shoddiest of apartment hotels, who are 

neither business nor social Bohemians, but young married 

I people who take to the life partly because it can be made 

I cheap, and the trouble of living reduced to a minimum 

(once a week they sign a cheque ; there, by pressing a 

button, the manager does the rest), but more because it 

makes them partners to that gorgeous entrance-hall, and 

J the general impression (so they think) of living smartly and 

lavishly. The apartment hotel as it flourishes in our large 

cities is the consummate flower of domestic co-operation. 



372 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 






but it is also the consummate flower of domestic irresponsi 
bility, and it means the sacrifice of " home," for no one 
could apply the word to two rooms and a bath, approached 
through an imitation onyx entrance and a multi-mirrored 
lift. 

That there are fifteen thousand married people so 
accommodated in New York City, and a proportionate 
number in Chicago and Boston, would seem to forbid^ 
apathy on the part of American sociologists, and to give 
rise to sensations, even to emotions. At least, it seems 
contributory testimony to the charge that the native 
American woman looks upon household duties as ordeals 
to bring one's halo into premature bloom, but to be side- 
stepped as often as possible. 

The suburban and rural housing in America is, of 
course, that of the individual home, and we have nobly 
illustrated that it is the right of every man to make his 
home as ugly and illogical as he pleases. 

Naturally provincial architecture in America is an 
architecture of wood, but that is no excuse for its lack of 
permanent dignity and beauty. Switzerland has an 
excellent architecture in wood which it has achieved through 
a Gothic mode of expression ; but to turn from the romantic 
architecture of the Swiss chalet to the hopelessly sordid 
and melancholy types of provincial architecture in America 
is to turn from what is the outcome of centuries of tried 
and proved development of architecture among a people 
in whom the sesthetic is innate, to experimental stations 
conducted by a people in whom taste is an art yet to be 
acquired. 

Taste in American architecture disappears in the 
interest of expediency and commercialism, and withal, 
when we do venture toward the esthetic we are led, 
through America's phenomenal disrespect for the superla- 
tive degree, to adopt the extremes of eccentric modernism. 

So we have the weird combination of the strictly 



HOUSING THE NATION 373 

utilitarian art of house building with a perfect labyrinth of 
unreason in grotesque details supposed to represent the 
" latest styles " in architecture. So we have our aberra- 
tion in jumbled architecture ; nightmares like the ultra- 
fashionable " Queen Anne " rage in the eighties, and East 
Lake gig-saw effects which rendered architecture of that 
period an absurdity. So we are still achieving in our 
provincial architecture the flat-headed two-story and attic 
houses with cellar windows at the top ; the two-story 
buildings with the so-called French roof; the chuckle- 
headed gambrel-roofed houses covered from sill to ridge 
' pole with an eruption of shingles ; the " Queen Anne " 
I gables overhanging colonial fronts, and ornate false fronts 
I hiding the true method of roofing, and with no chimneys 
I in sight. 

I A view of a street in a town in England or France 

I where dwell the middle class or artisans impresses one by 

1 the simple dignity of the lines and the natural use of the 

' materials in nearly all the houses ; while a view of a 

i similar district in America is liable to leave one of any 

' sensibilities with a feeling that the theory of a continuous 

harmony in line and colour is but a dream, and apparently 

impossible of realization. An Italian or Swiss village seen 

I from a distance seems to nestle among its surrounding 

j hills with a unity of line and colour that makes it a 

I simulacrum of Nature's doings rather than something of 

i man's creation, whereas the average American town 

I appears from a distance as a meaningless jumble of forms 

] and colours like a disarranged interior of a kaleidoscope. 

A French peasant's cottage or a burgher's house in Holland 

is soothing to the eyes, and will tempt the artist to stop for 

a sketch, but the usual house of a similar type in America 

is at war with its surrounding landscape and a shock to the 

atmosphere. To one doubting these generalizations I can 

only urge an inspection for himself of the streets of an 

average American town. If his sense of humour be keen 



374 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

he will find more real entertainment than during an 
evening at a vaudeville show. He will find human nature 
reflecting itself in all sorts of queer and vulgar ways just 
because it can. He will see the means-well-but-don't- 
know-how, the aggressive and timid types. He will find 
some that reflect a consciousness of being strictly the thing 
with an air of haughty disdain. He will find the prudish 
and the coquettishly lady-like house side by side, and 
others that are just plain nothing at all. In short, he will 
see so much of human vanity on their painted fronts that 
he will be prone to wonder how life within moves along as 
placidly as it does when each of its dwellings is a jar to 
its neighbour. It is most rare to find a house that tells a 
tale of a want satisfied simply and directly with a logical 
use of materials on good lines and proportions. 

As a rule, provincial architecture is, of course, in the 
hands of "home talent" — home-made architects evolved 
from lazy or ambitious carpenters whose sole qualification 
for the position is the ability to buy the value of $3 for $2 
expenditure. So that when man, as exemplified in the 
everyday American citizen, objects to the dignified, plain- 
surface and simple opening in his home and demands an 
exceedingly active quality in his architecture, and this 
development is entrusted to an amateur architect, it is not 
to be marvelled at that the streets of our towns and 
villages, often the outskirts of cities, present " as weird an 
aggregation of grotesque forms as the most motley line- 
up of Chinese soldiery." 

The English influence in early American architecture 
brought what is known as the " Colonial type " : an admir- 
able straight-lined type which was preserved while the 
element of hardships that interfered with efflorescent 
architecture, as it did with sentimental reflection, prevailed 
in the new country. 

The "colonial" builders played the game strictly 
according to Hoyle. They essayed no "stunts." It was 



HOUSING THE NATION 375 

rare then for a man to think he knew more and better 
than his grandfather, which is so customary with later 
generations in America, and no Englishman in America 
thought of copying the bewitching hooded edifices which 
the Dutch tried to introduce as a style. 

But it was finally discovered that interior discomfort 
was put at a maximum through the draughty centre hall, 
the large rooms, and the small house, small rooms, heating 
stoves and — bad architecture sprang into being. 

For interior comfort is the keynote of provincial, of 
almost all, architecture in America. 

Later on, when our inventiveness and resources made 
it possible to have candelabra wired for electricity, and 
uneven floors covered with waxed parquetry and Persian 
rugs ; when a central heating plant could take the place 
of warming pans, we again claimed the colonial homestead. 
We began to build the colonial type again, and while the 
East Lake has gone, the Victorian Gothic has departed, 
Romanesque is no more. Queen Anne has waned with 
the other *' rages" in American architecture, we are still 
erecting " colonial houses." But it is that the colonial 
house with up-to-date equipment can be made comfortable 
as much as an appreciation of their expression in a simple 
and direct way the manner of construction, that has led 
to the revival. 

For whatever may be said of provincial architecture 
considered aesthetically from exterior view, in interior 
arrangement and conveniences the American houses of 
this class rather lead. It is a very small and undeveloped 
town where there is not a water back attachment in the 
kitchen for keeping hot water, where there is not concreted 
floor in the cellars and modern apparatus for heating. 
Tiled baths and electric lights are no longer rarities. As 
far as the actual comforts of life go, town and village 
homes in America run the city houses a close second. In 
fact, many of the small town houses have features of 



376 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

sanitation and modem improvement the installation of 
which in Continental palaces would not be amiss. 

There is some compensation in being a new nation, and 
a fresh well-equipped interior more often than not lurks 
behind the profanity of our designers whereby they are 
expressing architecture to their countrymen. I think the 
characterization of one of our early Presidents is not 
inapplicable to our architecture, for it certainly shows 
" great presence of mind, but no delicacy." 

It would be a sorry outlook for America's future if we 
must accept in its entirety that article of aesthetic faith 
which proclaims that architecture is the one art that both 
reveals and determines the character of its creators and 
contemporaries, and that it is bound to leave a permanent 
and conspicuous influence upon national character. But I 
think a less radical view is justifiable. We are a young 
people reaching from a period of hardship to the glamour 
of great prosperity, and architecture has seemed as much a 
subject of whim as poke-bonnets and hoop-skirts and 
mutton-leg sleeves, directoire revivals and " moyen age " 
designs. We do not seem to realize that in architecture 
the eccentricities and vagaries which result from the 
prevalence of a passing vogue are obtrusively permanent 
above ground long after the reason for their existence is 
dead and buried. Our best architects are bringing over 
from Europe monumental types not only in actual home 
design but in the adaptation to environment and the per- 
spective in placing, and the homes of our wealthy class are 
becoming more and more really notable examples of the 
perennially good in architecture. The monuments of 
ugliness and ignorance which the retired millionaire 
proprietors of soap and shoe-blacking industries used to 
erect along Chicago's boulevards are giving way before 
the copies and modifications of the world's best in home 
architecture, as seen along Riverside Drive in New York 
and in the fashionable section of Washington. 



HOUSING THE NATION 377 

Still, it is well that America at large should ponder a 
bit upon the departing words of one of our foreign critics : 
" There are two arts that this most progressive people of 
the globe should cultivate in particular. One is the art of 
courtesy and the other is architecture. Neither, it seems, 
is taught in the public schools." 



CHAPTER XVI 

A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE 
CLASS 

" The church bells are ringing, 

The village is gay, 
For Lilla's to be married to-day. 

She's wooed and she's won 
By the bold baron's son — 
And now our Lilla's a lady." 

SO naively have sung humble English subjects for 
several hundred years, rejoicing over the merry 
village maiden's conquest of a member of the 
aristocracy. The song does not, however, say anything 
about the emotions of the baron's family upon the arrival 
of the humbly born bride among them, nor to what extent 
they allowed her to consider herself a "lady." It merely 
presents the poetic side of class-consciousness. A counter- 
part of the situation is supposed in America to lie in the 
oft-repeated newspaper headlines : " Millionaire Marries his 
Typewriter," or " Heir to Wealth Elopes with Telephone 
Girl." There really is, however, no counterpart, for the 
millionaire in all probability began life as an office boy or 
small clerk, and, in any case, his wealth being the only 
distinction between his social position and that of the 
young woman in his employment, there could be no real 
question of class infringement. There is no class in 
America on whom by arbitrary decree are conferred 

378 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 379 

material prerogative or prestige ; nor compulsory recogni- 
tion of superiority of any sort, and having no aristocracy, 
there is no upper limitation to the so-called masses, and so 
there is no middle class, corresponding to the term as used 
in England and abroad. You cannot call it a layer cake 
unless you have an upper crust placed over the filling. 

To any one from a country where aristocracy is as 
deeply rooted as it is in England, it seems incredible that 
the term " middle class " should be utterly without 
significance to a large proportion of our population. 

One summer day, becalmed off the coast of New 
England in a pleasure boat, an Englishman in the party 
drifted the conversation to comparative social conditions 
in the two countries. Afterwards the Yankee native, who 
had been at the yacht's tiller and overheard the comment, 
drew up to me curiously. " What'd he mean by all that 
talk about middle class ? " he asked, and added, " Folks 
middlin' well fixed, I guess." 

Even among the Americans who speak of certain of 
our people as being " middle class," there is a recognition 
of the futility of it as a generic term in this democracy. 

" What is this intellectual aristocracy we hear so much 
about in the United States ? " was asked a college professor. 

"Like all our aristocracy, it is high-water mark of 
mediocracy," he replied. 

If the definition of the middle class is reducible to 
precise mathematical terms, the assertion that there is a 
middle class in America is a statement open to no question. 
Between persons of great wealth, education, and birth 
traceable to a certain ancestral period, and the hewers of 
stone and the drawers of water, there is the mass ; but mere 
numbers do not constitute a middle class in the sense 
that the term is understood in Europe, where it defines a 
person's social status almost as precisely as caste does 
among Mohammedans. In England there is no legal or 
social roll on which the names of the middle class are 



38o HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

inscribed any more than there is in France a register of the 
bourgeoisie, yet in England as well as in France both terms 
convey exact meaning. 

It means a class in which " everybody is just nobody," 
and, socially speaking, by the same token in America, 
where everybody has a chance of becoming somebody, 
the term " middle class " means nothing. 

Though, in order to make comparison at all possible, 
the term is used throughout this book to indicate what 
corresponds in size if not in a connotation to the English 
"middle class," certain phases of American life and its 
social conditions cannot be appreciated without the re- 
cognition that we are, in the last analysis, a nation without 
a middle class. 

There can be and there is a " lower class," composed of 
the men who work with their hands as opposed to those who 
work, more or less, with their brains ; the bricklayer, the 
carpenter, the iron worker forming the best paid and most 
intelligent of the sons of Martha ; the hod-carrier, the day 
labourer, the scavenger constituting the least intellectual 
and the worst paid. These form a class by themselves, 
apart from and easily distinguished from what in Europe 
would be the middle class ; the clerk, the salesman, the 
petty shopkeeper forming the lower middle class ; the 
shopkeeper who has risen to the dignity of a ** merchant," 
and the business and professional man, belonging either to 
the great middle class or the upper middle class, gauged 
by culture and wealth. 

There is no defined middle class in America because 
there is no boundary separating the middle class from the 
upper class. Between the "working man," using that term 
broadly, and the man whom society does not classify as a 
working man, although there is no exact term to describe 
him, the social frontier has been as narrowly delimited as 
the boundaries between nations. The working man betrays 
his status by his looks, his manners and his dres^ ; the 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 381 

middle class and the upper class have the same superficial 
polish and wear the same clothes : so far as appearances go 
it is often difficult to determine whether a man is a floor- 
walker or a judge. 

Though we affect in our democratic simplicity to 
despise the pride of ancestry, love of an ancestor still 
survives, and there are orders of large membership among 
the descendants of those who fought in our early wars, 
were of conspicuous service in colonial times, or, innermost 
! circle of all, of those who can boast a remote grandparent 
among the passengers on the " Mayflower." When you see 
the insignia of one of these patriotic societies upon bodices 
or waistcoat, and the " pins " are about the size of a half 
sovereign, it behoves you to take thought of the number 
and quality of your grandfathers and speak with due rever- 
ence to the wearer. 

The largest of these orders, composed entirely of 
1 women, is said to open its annual convention in prayerful 
intercession with Providence for those of less distinguished 
ancestry ! These sessions being of such a stormy nature 
that a Yankee bishop once remarked that he " guessed their 
claims to revolutionary ancestry were bona fide, for they 
evidently were lively fighters." 

However, the societies do much to keep up a sense of 
tradition, a rare quality in America, and if it does seem at 
times as if the main activity of the members towards 
gratifying their pride in the deeds of their fathers lay in 
teaching kindergartens of foreign children to go through 
flag drills and sing " The Star Spangled Banner," it 
should not be overlooked that these stormy meetings, the 
organization and the parliamentary practice have been a 
splendid influence in bringing out the American women. 
Still, those few middle-class English ancestors, whose 
shades must have felt themselves hard pressed by the 
claims of a conspicuously numerous posterity, cannot 
make an American aristocracy. 



382 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

Of course, abroad it is not of the slightest consequence 
whether the founder of a family was a clever scoundrel or 
an amusing companion, a military genius or a statesman, 
a passionless man of science or a woman of passion. 
Admitted into the aristocratic order, whether through 
brains or beauty, the position of the man or woman is 
established. 

Tradition and law and a sovereign have so decreed. 
The descendants of the women whose portraits were 
painted by Lely to please his sovereign are to-day among 
the aristocracy of England. 

In America, however, the spectacle of a certain set of 
citizens saying somewhat aggressively, " It is to laugh at 
ancient forms and superstitions, and so shall we go our 
own gait and apologize to no one," and still attempting to 
found an aristocracy of birth out of colonial descent, can 
hardly be taken more seriously than the formation in 
every town of a " Ladies' Missionary Society " or a 
" Literary Circle," to which all the " first families " belong. 
At best this cannot be an aristocracy. A so-called aristo- 
cratic class found in a few of the older states of the East, 
is too small and too widely scattered to form a distinct 
community or to limit its social intercourse to its own 
members, and, too, they have no common purpose in life. 
Indeed, birth means very little to the American. The 
transitory nature of society in America, the opportunities 
for fortune, the amazing chances, the feeling every man 
has that social advancement, and with it wealth, is his if 
he is shrewd and smart enough, the lamp of Aladdin 
always at hand, make it impossible that a middle class 
can exist in America or that reverence shall be paid to an 
aristocracy of blood. The fact that a man is a grandson 
of a statesman or great commander entitles him to no 
particular veneration among a people who respect achieve- 
ment but who do not practise the cult of ancestor worship. 
The grandfather played his part and won distinction ; the 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 383 

grandson must stand on his own feet. It is not to be 
denied that birth helps. It does. Descendants of men 
who have won fame have their path made easier for them, 
and to that extent have an advantage over others less 
fortunate, but it ends there. In America an historical 
name is to a certain extent capital, but it is, after all, only 
a minor asset. Not many men would go many miles out 
of their way to see the great-grandson of a former Pre- 
sident, but they would make a Sabbath Day's journey to 
see a living President or a great captain of industry, or 
any one else who had done something particularly specta- 
cular or noteworthy, because the object of interest represents 
power, achievement, success, accomplishment. The son 
of the great man who has not lived up to the paternal 
reputation is an object of contempt, but seldom of pity. 
The American sees that he was given his chance and mis- 
used it, and he has little sympathy for a man so foolish as 
not to make the most use of his advantages. Just as 
estates in America are unentailed, so gratitude does not 
devolve from father to son. Every generation must 
begin anew and create its own claims to national recog- 
nition. 

The business of government has not been delegated to 
any one class. There is no such aristocratic institution as 
a bench of bishops, and to be a bishop does not necessarily 
imply wealth or family. The army is not officered by the 
younger sons of rich and aristocratic fathers. The navy 
is a poor man's profession. Elevation to the judiciary 
bench does not depend upon social qualifications. The 
Presidency is not the prize which only men of blood can 
hope to capture. There have been Presidents of little 
culture and without descent. 

These things, one would say, are evidence that there 
is a middle class, but, on the contrary, they prove that 
there is no aristocracy, and where there is no aristocracy 
there can be no middle class ; they prove that there can 



384 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

be one great class to which the whole people belong, but 
no well-defined social divisions. 

Americans in their moments of despair — and national 
hypochondriacism is a national weakness — and superficial 
European writers are prone to indulge in the expression 
" the aristocracy of wealth," convinced that it is impossible 
for society to exist without an aristocratic class, and that 
in America wealth is the sole qualification. But here 
again the term means nothing. Thenumber of Americans 
who have inherited wealth from a great-grandfather is 
fractional compared with those who have inherited from 
their fathers, and still smaller compared with those who 
have amassed fortune by their own efforts. 

Those persons who might be called aristocrats because 
of blood, station, and means are not always the very 
wealthy ; in fact, speaking broadly, it is safe to say that 
the great fortunes are in the possession of men who would 
be the first to deny the appellation of aristocrat ; their 
wealth is too recent and their rise has been too rapid not 
to make it absurd to put them in a class superior to those 
who are not their equals to the extent only of having a 
few less millions or wielding a smaller power in the world 
of finance or business. As I write this chapter there are 
columns in the newspapers recounting the career of a 
financier who in his particular line was a genius, who 
exercised a control over the railways of the country greater 
than any other man, who had all the despotic power of an 
Oriental monarch, and could make men rich or impoverish 
them, who lived in greater style and luxury than many 
princes, whose actions were of international interest, and 
who left to his wife a fortune estimated in the tens of 
millions. Yet no one ever called this man an aristocrat, 
although during his lifetime he was called many other 
things not as complimentary, or looked upon him as 
belonging to the aristocratic order. His fortune and his 
position were won in the last twelve years of his life. His 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 385 

wealth, his power, and his genius at another time in the 
world's history and under different social conditions would 
have made him the founder of an aristocratic family ; but 
neither his wealth, his power, nor his genius made him an 
aristocrat in America. 

Now, this man was not different from hundreds of 
others, except in having occupied a more spectacular 
place before the public, and perhaps had more audacity 
and great prevision. His fortune was not the largest that 
has been amassed in a decade or two, it was made in the 
same way as other men had made theirs ; all these men 
of great fortune who are actively engaged in business are 
mentally cast in the same mould. They are usually of 
simple and domestic tastes, devoted to their wives, and 
fond of their children, who build great houses or acquire 
estates more to please their wives and children than for 
their own gratification, who buy pictures or give millions 
to education or charity as a sort of votive-offering, and as 
their tithe out of their abundance, who take no active part 
in politics by aspiring to office, although they are almost 
always party men and contributors to party funds, and their 
political indifference is only aroused into action when 
politics threaten their business, or the success of their 
ventures depends upon the victory of a political party. 
There is no universal and profound admiration for the man 
who has consecrated his whole life to the amassing of 
wealth. There died about the same time as this great 
financier a man in one of our Western states who had risen 
from a destitute immigrant class to be Governor of his 
state. He had made some money — not much — as he 
fought his way to the political front, but he had the con- 
fidence of his state, the regard of his country as a man of 
political integrity, and as a man whose sympathies were 
with the people from whom he sprang, until he stood a 
candidate for national honour. When he died, to his 
family came from all over the United States ten times the 
2 c 



386 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

number of messages of sympathy and bereft affection as 
reached the home from which the railroad millionaire had 
passed. 

In the last quarter of a century, not to go back 
further, hundreds of millionaires — many of whom can 
reckon their wealth in millions of pounds rather than 
millions of dollars — have been created. Iron, meat, oil, 
electricity, railways, real property, have made men rich, 
so fabulously rich that Croesus is as much out of date as a 
synonym of wealth as the mail coach is of speed ; the dis- 
coverer of the Pactolian sands need search no chart of 
Phrygia, for on the map of New York or Pittsburg or 
Chicago the quest is found ; the gift of Midas has descended 
to Americans, who use their power with discretion, and 
are not starved by their own gold. The opportunities for 
amassing wealth are so great — and for losing it almost 
equally as great — that the ascent to the "aristocracy of 
wealth " — if there is such a thing — is not, as it is in Europe, 
a matter of generations and a slow and painful process, 
during which the crude material is rounded off into the 
finished social product. The Englishman who begins life 
with nothing except his brains and his courage, and makes 
a fortune out of trade, and has the ambition to leave a 
name or title to his children, develops through certain 
stages, all of which leave their impress upon him, at least 
superficially. The surest road to gain the honours which 
he is seeking is through Parliament, and there the contact 
with men his superior in rank, birth and culture is reflected 
in his conduct and his manners. There is a standard to 
which he may aspire, nay, more than that, which he mtist 
reach if his ambition is to be gratified. This is not to 
be taken as meaning that the man who has lived a hard, 
rough, unlettered life is transformed into a man of refine- 
ment or culture because he has been elected to Parliament, 
but he is influenced by his surroundings, as every person 
is, whether for good or evil. 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 387 

In America fortunes come with a rush. The fictional 
Christopher Vance suggests, in his speculative audacity 
and rapid rise, the American rather than the Englishman ; 
but Christopher and his wife can never rise beyond their 
class, and, despite their money, their proper milieu is 
Stallwood*s Cottages and not the West End. The 
American ChristopJier Vance, as his money piled up, would 
give up the cottage in the outlying suburb, and take a 
house in one of the less pretentious streets of the city ; 
with the outlook promising, even although he had no 
assured income from investments, for he would take chances 
of that coming later — that is the American temperament — 
he would either buy or build a house on the fringe of 
society ; finally, if all his ventures turned out well, he 
would buy a house in the " best " part of town, he would 
have his automobiles and his servants, his wife's receptions 
and bridge parties would be duly chronicled in the social 
columns of the local newspaper. This change from the 
cottage to the mansion, from strict economy to lavish 
expenditure, may, and often has, come in less than ten 
years. 

At this point temperament, social institutions and 
national characteristics mark the difference between the 
American and the Englishman. During the time they 
were struggling they were, so to speak, an interchangeable 
mentality, the Englishman, if accident had cast his lot in 
America, w^ould have acted in the same way as the 
American, if chance had put him in England ; which 
would lead many superficial observers to say that there is 
no real difference between the Englishman and the 
American, they are men of the same stock inspired by the 
same motives ; their variance only emphasizes their 
likeness, as their minor differences of speech serve to 
make obvious that they are men of a common stock. 
Yet when the Englishman has made his fortune, his 
ambition is social position, and we have seen that there 



388 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

are ways by which that ambition can be gratified. To 
give up business, to retire and live on his income, is, I 
suppose, the hope of every English tradesman and 
business man who is the founder of his own fortunes. Or 
while remaining in control of their business they live the 
life that is so dear to every Englishman, and custom and 
habit have made part of himself ; they have their country 
houses where they spend much of their time, they find 
employment merely from the fact that they are in the 
country, there is something in life for them besides 
" business." 

But the American who has made his money, speaking 
broadly, but with sufficient accuracy to give the statement 
the merit of exactitude, has no other sources within him- 
self, and no means by which he can gain distinction. He 
can go on making money, and he can find in it the delight 
that comes to every man who wins the game that he plays, 
and all the excitement that comes from hazard, or he can 
settle down into an aimless, monotonous existence and 
become a forlorn, almost pathetic figure. He no more 
thinks of turning to politics than he would build himself 
an observatory and spend his nights at the telescope, for 
he instinctively feels that he is as unfitted to legislate as 
he is to make astronomical discoveries. He has never 
given any attention to the practical end of politics ; he has 
no acquaintance with political managers ; he knows his 
oratorical deficiences, and political life holds no attractions 
for him. 

As the House of Lords has been nicknamed affection- 
ately at times " The Chamber of Horrors," *' Lethal 
Chamber," or "The Hospital for Incurables," so the 
United States Senate is known as the " Rich Men's Club," 
but the thrust merely means ;that there is not in general as 
total dependence upon the Government salary of ;^I500 
for sole income as there is among the members of the 
Lower House. The fact that a group of men with any 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 389 

money at all going into politics creates opprobrious 
epithets shows how unaccustomed we are to such a con- 
dition. There are several men now in the Senate worth a 
few millions apiece, but the men noteworthy for their 
wealth alone are not found in the American political field. 
Political preferment does not come as a reward of wealth, 
and the most that men of wide-famed possessions can do 
in the United States is the making of a contribution to 
the campaign funds for the election of a candidate 
agreeable to his interests. Even these campaign con- 
tributions are the subject of political party recriminations 
and enforced publicity nowadays. The enormously 
wealthy man is always regarded with suspicion, and any 
large charitable scheme on his part is accepted as restitu- 
tion ; not heralded as altruism. 

Foreigners visiting America find much to marvel at in 
our humble millionaires. Europe also has its millionaires, 
many of them, but it rarely hears of them. They work in 
secret ; they are the real power, but Europe scarcely knows 
it. In Europe the Press cannot attack a millionaire. It 
dare not. If it began such an attack it would at once be 
silenced by the power of money. Such a crusade, for 
instance, as has been made here against the Standard Oil 
Company would not have been possible in Europe. 

The European millionaire gives nothing away. In- 
deed, he would laugh at the mere suggestion that it is 
his duty to give away money, or that he holds his 
money in trust for the people or for society at large. 
** What," he would cry, " my money is mine ! I made it 
or I inherited it. It is mine, mine, my very own to do 
with as I like." And everybody would agree v/ith him. 
No one in Europe would suggest that millions entail a 
duty to society. Yet here such a notion is quite prevalent. 
It is even put forward gravely by millionaires themselves. 
One of the men who has made a world-famous 
fortune in America has taken every occasion to expound 



390 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

publicly this theory — to European minds so extra- 
ordinary — that the community at large has an absolute 
right to share in a man's millions — that he is merely a 
trustee of his wealth. A large share of another enormous 
American fortune has been dedicated to charity recently, 
the administration of it put in the hand of the son of the 
magnate, who will devote his life to it. 

In Europe, when a millionaire dies, if he leaves a 
trifling sum to charity the general public will exclaim, 
" How generous." In England, to be sure, this is not so 
much so as on the Continent, for the British aristocracy, 
whose wealth is largely inherited from long generations, 
has always been taught and has generally recognized that 
it has certain duties to society at large. This is not so 
on the Continent, where, I understand, even the recent 
English agitation over pressure on landed estates is 
regarded as iconoclastic. I can think of only one 
millionaire in Europe who is public spirited in his 
munificence, and this is the French Baron Rothschild. 

Perhaps the American millionaires do not give away 
their vast sums altogether because they love giving ; yet 
the fact that public opinion practically coerces such a 
course from them is sufficient refutation to the charge of 
an aristocracy of wealth in the United States. 

We allow a millionaire to found a great university ; to 
devote his millions to founding and supporting a vast 
establishment in which the youth of the nation is to 
acquire its ideals. Such an institution as the Chicago 
University is unimaginable in any country in Europe, 
because, as one foreigner exclaimed, "The State would 
not allow it ! If a millionaire started to do anything of 
that sort the State would instantly step in and say to him, 
• No, my dear sir ; do what you like with your money, but 
leave the training of our youth to me. I, the State, have 
charge of that. It is for me alone to say how the young 
men and women are to be brought up ; I will place before 



t 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 391 

them the ideals that I think they should have. I will 
have no interference on your part.' " 

However, although Mr. Rockefeller has founded, 
endowed and supported this great university, he does not 
interfere at all in the management ; he does not dictate 
the professors who shall lecture there nor the curriculum 
that shall be followed. And the foreigner who shudders 
over the false ideal that might be set before the youth of 
America by an unscrupulous millionaire controlling a 
university through his donations, shudders over a bogey. 
For with our curiously specialized respect for ability, that 
is just what does not take place. 

We debar the man of scholastic attainments from our 
respect as a virile factor in active public life, but we hold 
him above the millionaire in controlling the ideals and 
minutiae of an institution of learning. In Europe, that a 
man is a professor or lecturer at a university would not 
disqualify him for political honours or bar him against 
holding an administrative post ; in America it would be 
almost fatal to his advancement, for the college professor 
is generally regarded as a man of little worldly wisdom, 
too immersed in his books, and too saturated with the 
petty tyranny of the class-room to take a practical view of 
life ; too obviously content to get along on a small salary 
to command the respect that the material age pays to 
success. Yet the newspapers give much space — very 
frequently it has seemed to me undue space — to the 
obiter dicta of university presidents and college professors, 
and a book on whose title-page appears the name of a 
college professor will be treated by the reviewers with 
greater consideration than the work of a layman, without 
regard to their respective merits. 

It is, after all, ability for achievement that the 
American exalts. 

One of the great captains of industry in the United 
States, on the occasion of the great coal strike some years 



392 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

ago, took the leader of that labour movement into the 
office of J. Pierpont Morgan, the man at whose beck 
trans-continental systems of railways went up and at 
whose nod they came down. 

John Mitchell, the miner, was earning perhaps $150 a 
month, yet the man who made the introduction said after- 
wards that its form sprang involuntarily to his lips — 

" Mr. Morgan, I should like to make you acquainted 
with John Mitchell," he said; and added, "he wants to 
talk to you about conditions in the anthracite regions. I 
vouch for him in every particular." 

And there you have it. The banker was presented to 
the miner, because the miner was the man who knew the 
facts, who was " doing things," in this instance. Etiquette 
and money, too, not to mention a reputation which filled 
the whole of Europe, would have brought Mitchell to 
J. P. Morgan with pulse beating considerably faster than 
normal, but the man who introduced them, and he was a 
man well versed in conventions, involuntarily introduced 
Morgan to Mitchell, and that is the fine point of the story. 
What the American respects is achievement. The man 
who represents the knowledge and the achievement in the 
matter for the moment under consideration is the man of 
the hour. 

It therefore follows that America's idolatry of the 
"golden calf" is true, to the extent of the worship of 
wealth as an obvious expression of successful effort. 

Thus, while it has been the fashion of the past few 
years to abuse the millionaire and hold him responsible 
for a great many real and imaginary ills, secretly the 
American feels toward the millionaire — even for the 
particular representative of plutocracy then the special 
target of attack, of whom he knows nothing except what he 
has wrought — admiration for his ability tinctured by envy. 
The Americans are a virile people, and with them virility 
is almost a fetish. It has been said that they are a brutal 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 393 

people, who have no sympathy for the weak or the 
unfortunate, and that the only god they worship is Success 
in an eighty-horse-power car smashing through everything 
at sixty miles an hour. That, of course, is not merely 
an exaggeration, it is calumny, for while it is true that 
wealth is always courted — that the one thing the majority 
of Americans want most is money and plenty of it ; and 
that accumulated wealth seizes the imagination and makes 
a dramatic appeal to us — still in no sense do we allow 
the millionaires with a spectacular rise to fortune to ride 
furiously into a ruling class. 

One thing that impresses an American returning from 
Europe is the difference between our millionaires as 
Europe imagines them and as they are really found in their 
homes, their clubs, and their places of business. Europe 
thinks the American millionaire is a tyrant. It thinks he 
grinds down the people under his heel. It thinks he is 
all-powerful. It thinks of America as groaning under his 
despotic sway. The American millionaire is no such 
thing. He is less powerful here than his kind in Europe. 
Least of all is he part of a mail-handed aristocracy. 

Yet I heard an acute American woman, with our 
national frankness in talking about ourselves, once remark 
to an Englishman — 

" You English dearly love a lord ; we Americans like a 
millionaire, but we love a ten millionaire, and as for 
a hundred millionaire, we simply worship him ! There is 
no aristocracy in this country, but there is a snobocracy. 
We are a nation of snobs, who reverence only one thing, 
and that is money. If you have money in America you 
are somebody ; if you haven't money you are nothing, no 
matter how many fine qualities you may have." And, 
quite naturally, the Englishman accepted it without polite 
disclaimer. 

This cynical interpretation of national character is 
perhaps not entirely justified, but it is susceptible of an 



394 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

interpretation different from that of its surface indication. 
In Europe a poor man may be a distinguished man, or he 
may be the bearer of a name that gives him distinction, 
but in America his standing is the result of his own 
endeavours, and the great bulk of Americans are engaged 
in business. The more money an American has, the 
greater the presumption of his ability and the proof that 
he has earned the reward that his industry or genius 
entitled him to, the greater respect his fellowmen have for 
him ; just as in England the man who through his own 
efforts has won his peerage has demonstrated his worth. 
Sometimes the wrong man is rewarded, sometimes in 
America the man of no particular ability becomes rich, 
but striking a general average, merit or ability count for 
more than pure luck. 

Moreover, the American millionaire usually has acquired 
the '* work habit" along with his millions, and it is hard 
to imagine an aristocracy always in the workshop ! If 
the American had the Englishman's almost passion- 
ate love of nature, the American business man who had 
made his fortune would become a country magnate and 
breed horses or prize cattle, if he wanted to go into things 
on a big scale, or potter about a garden, if his tastes were 
modest ; but Americans have no love for the country. It 
is the city that the American really loves, for he is 
gregarious, and feels lost when he is not touching elbows 
with his fellowman, or, better still, feels some other man's 
elbows touching his ribs. The American really likes a 
crowd. It is curious how national traits unconsciously find 
their expression in words. A popular expression among 
Americans, especially young men and women who want 
to have a gay, informal time, is "a crowd." Nothing is 
more common than to hear colloquially, "We'll get a 
crowd together," meaning the people who are congenial ; 
or " Who's going to be in the crowd ? " or " He doesn't 
belong to our crowd," that is, he is not in our set. An 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 395 

Englishman above the lower class turns up his nose at 
the thought of a crowd, it is too much promiscuous and 
too " common " to be pleasant. " Such an awful crowd," 
expresses an Englishman's disdain ; an American will talk 
of "the great crowd" with admiration ; numbers are proof 
of success or popularity. Fashion drives American men and 
women to the country just as it sends them to sit through 
an opera in Italian or a five-act tragedy in blank verse, 
whereas inclination and amusement lead them to light 
opera and farce comedy. 

Another reason why the American who has made his 
fortune still remains a money maker and does not attempt 
to become an " aristocrat " is that if he should retire and 
lead a life of ease there would be no one for him to play 
with. He would be almost solitary. There is in America 
no retired middle class. The man who frankly does 
nothing is looked upon almost with suspicion or even with 
contempt, and unless his " laziness " can be attributed to 
illness he is regarded as a pretty poor stick of a fellow, 
and would not be held up as a model for ambitious youth 
to pattern after. If he has money and has gained a 
reputation for shrewdness, he is expected to be at the head 
of a bank or some other business institution ; he must 
actively manage his property and go to his office with the 
regularity of a clerk and remain there during the clerks' 
hours. A wife, no matter how much affection she may 
have for her husband, does not want him " around the 
house " during the daytime ; a woman who would drive to 
her husband's office and take him off to an afternoon 
concert would be rare enough to cause comment. Con- 
sequently, there is nothing for the great mass of rich 
Americans who have made their fortunes in trade except 
to keep on adding to their fortunes. Custom sanctions 
that they may take two or three months' holiday in the 
summer, when they can play golf or go to the seashore or 
the country or make a foreign trip ; they may without any 



396 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

loss of self-respect go to Florida or the West Indies for a 
few weeks during the winter, but for the remaining eight 
months or so of the year they are expected to be actively 
employed. 

Having dealt with the founder of the family fortunes it 
will no doubt be asked whether the sons and daughters of 
this man do not, either by marriage or the advantages which 
come from education and culture, pass from the middle 
class about them, and in the second generation turn their 
backs on "business" and become an aristocratic leisure 
class. I believe that a leisure class is growing in America, 
but I feel confident in saying that it has not yet come, 
and under the present conditions of society it will be a 
matter of very slow growth. In the first place, the 
prohibition against entail makes it impossible for a fortune 
to be handed down intact from father to son, but leads to 
the distribution of wealth. To a certain extent the law 
against entail during the last few years has been defied by 
men creating trusts which, in some States, may endure for 
" a life or lives in being and twenty-one years thereafter," 
so that it is possible to prevent the distribution of an 
estate for nearly a century, and during that time the heirs 
enjoy the income, but have no power over the principal, 
nor can they devise it. 

But while this is a growing practice and will doubtless 
be corrected, as it is an evasion of the intent if not the 
spirit of the law of entail, and would eventually create an 
aristocracy of wealth dangerous to free institutions, at 
the present time most fathers do not discriminate against 
their children, unless morally or mentally a child has 
shown his unfitness, and not only do they share equally in 
his fortune but, at a suitable age, its care is left to them ; 
so that the great wealth of the first generation, concentrated 
in the hands of one man, in the second generation is 
frequently distributed among half a dozen or more persons. 
It is perhaps a wise provision of nature that genius or a 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 397 

special faculty for accomplishment is rarely transmitted, 
or if inherited its force is weakened. The great captain 
of industry seldom has a son who is his equal in business 
acumen, and in very few cases only have the fortunes left 
by Americans been increased by the ability displayed by 
their children, although the family wealth has grown by 
the unearned increment or through circumstances in no 
way dependent upon shrewdness or foresight in its 
management. Houses in a growing city year by year 
increase in value, and as leases fall in they are renewed at 
a higher rate ; stocks and bonds in railway and other 
companies appreciate with the development of the country ; 
agricultural lands become urban, and the farm that was 
bought by the acre is sold by the foot, so that while the 
combined wealth of the family in the third generation 
may be greater than it was in the first, it has not been 
increased by the efforts of its members, and the wealth 
being distributed instead of concentrated the danger of a 
plutocracy is less to be feared. There is always, of course, 
the probability of the spendthrift and the dissolute 
member of the family, who spends not only his income, 
but eats into his capital and thus hastens the process of 
distribution. 

The children of rich men — speaking now more especially 
of the sons — are given all the advantages that wealth can 
buy in the way of education and cultural development, 
they live in great luxury and are usually provided with 
generous incomes ; but American fathers, speaking almost 
without exception, demand that their sons shall have a 
profession or go into business and shall not content them- 
selves with simply idling their way through life. If the 
American father were to reduce his code to precise terms, 
he would say something to this effect : " I want my son 
to be a gentleman, and for that reason I send him to 
Harvard or Yale and give him the money he asks for. I 
want him to marry well and be in society. He needn't 



398 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

worry about money ; I've money enough for both. He has 
his motor car, yes," — he would add with an amused and 
tolerant smile — "yes, he was fined the other day for 
speeding — gad, what would my father have said if I had 
been hauled up before a police court and fined ! — well, 
these youngsters must have their fling, and he shall have 
his good time while he's young — but I don't want the 
boy to be a * loafer.' I don't know yet what I am going 
to do with him ; he'll probably come into my office when 
he gets through college.'* 

That in all probability is what the boy will do. The 
father wants his son to have a business training so that he 
will be able to manage the family fortune when it descends 
to him, although if he prefers to go to the bar or become 
an engineer there will be no objection. But fathers have 
no sympathy with the " loafer," the young man who has 
no more serious purposes in life than the cut of his clothes 
or a cotillon figure. Curiously enough, the young woman 
of this social class holds much the same views. She wants 
to marry a man who has money, who can give her a 
motor car and jewelry and the other things that women 
delight in ; she plays tennis or golf and hunts and drives, 
and desires a husband who has the same tastes and the 
means to gratify them, but she has not had enough 
ancestors who did nothing for it to be in her blood to 
make it seem proper that her husband shall be his father's 
pensioner. De Tocqueville's observation — "moreover, as 
all the large fortunes, which are to be met with in a 
democratic community, are of commercial growth, many 
generations must succeed each other before their pos- 
sessors can have entirely laid aside their habits of 
business," is as true to-day as when it was written more 
than a half century ago ; so early were certain basic traits 
established in the American character, so much have they 
become a part of the American. The young woman 
lives in a world of action, a world in which the men do 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 399 

something, a world of achievement, and it is natural she 
should require that her husband, and therefore herself, shall 
be part of it and not find their anchorage in a backwater 
of mere luxury. There is in all this nothing to create an 
aristocracy or to form a middle class ; on the contrary, 
the social forces are opposed to an aristocratic order. 
The girl may be richer than some of her associates or not 
so rich, but she is still in that class which is as far removed 
from aristocracy in the European sense as it is from the 
working class, but which is not the middle class, as the 
French and the English understand the meaning of the 
word bourgeoisie. 

There are not classes in America, but there are sets, 
which is a very different thing. Every city, every com- 
munity, has its sets, and the term " best society " as used 
in one community and applied to one set is meaningless 
when used in another, so different are the standards of 
wealth and culture and the requirements that every com- 
munity imposes upon itself. Mr. Bryce was impressed by 
the existence of " sets." The nature of a man's occupation, 
he points out, his education, his manners and breeding, 
his income, his connexions, all come into view in determin- 
ing whether he is ** a gentleman." In a Western city like 
Detroit, Mr. Bryce says, the best people will say of a 
party that it was " very mixed." In some of the older 
cities, society is as exclusive as in the more old-fashioned 
countries, the "best set" considering itself very select 
indeed. But the foreign investigator is always bewildered 
at first, and later not unjustifiably amused, by newspaper 
social classifications. To illustrate these difiiculties. In 
a Washington newspaper is a telegram from a small place 
in Maryland telling of the overturning of a boat and the 
deaths of a pretty young factory girl and a young man, 
"who moved in the upper circles of society." Reading 
down you find that the young man who moved in the 
upper circles of society "formerly conducted a ticket 



400 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

broker's office, but about two years ago took a position as 
foreman in the factory," where the girl worked. To 
emphasize the social position of the dead youth, the corre- 
spondent states that " he was the son of " of one of 

the " first families " of the place where " the young man 
worked as a foreman in the factory," and that " the family 
came here about ten years ago from Luray, Va." The 
tragedy was expected to postpone the wedding of the 
young man's sister, which " would have been the society 
event of the season." 

Now this is not an exceptional illustration, nor is it 
taken from an obscure newspaper in a Western mining 
camp. It appears in one of the leading daily newspapers 
in Washington, the one city in America where society is 
taken seriously, where there is a cultivated, rich, leisure 
class ; and the Washington newspapers would as soon 
think of describing a Washington factory girl and a 
factory foreman as belonging to society as they would 
admit a negro's name to their society columns. In Wash- 
ington, New York, Boston or some other large cities it 
would be ridiculous for a newspaper to write about a 
factory foreman as in " society " ; in a small town the 
man might well be one of the leaders of society, as that 
town understands the term. It is the old story of being a 
big frog in a small puddle. Nor is the illustration I have 
just quoted exceptional. Time and again I have read of 
the elopement of a "prominent society belle," only to 
discover that the girl was " the night telephone operator," 
or the " proprietor of the leading millinery emporium " ; 
a man gets his name in the paper and is classified as " a 
leading merchant " and you find he keeps a small retail 
chemist's shop ; the village Don Juan spreads his snares 
for his victim because "he inherited a fortune from his 
father" — fortune so large that the ordinary well paid 
mechanic would turn up his nose at the income it yields. 
The climax of the misuse of terms was capped in a telegram 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 401 

recounting the arrest of '' a well-known man about town," 
who was revealed in his professional capacity as "the 
night hackman," the driver and proprietor of the one 
solitary cab of the place plying on the streets at night. 

By way of digression it may be added that it is not 
alone social customs that lead to this curious (and one 
would be inclined to think undemocratic) habit of creating 
classes, nor is it ignorance, but it is largely because the 
Americans as a people are deficient in the sense of 
proportion and hardly less deficient in the sense of 
humour, that is, in the flavour of humour as opposed to 
the labled " joke " and funny story, for which their appetite 
is phenomenal. 

A people with a sense of proportion and an appreciation 
of humour would see the absurdity of talking about a cab- 
driver as a man about town. The American laughs at the 
flowery phrases of the Latins, and their extravagant 
compliments, at the mock humility of the Oriental, who 
magnifies the importance of his guest by depreciating 
himself and all his possessions ; at the insincerity of the 
Mexican, who presents to a stranger anything that he 
may admire, both the donor and the recipient knowing 
that the " present " is made in merely a Pickwickian sense, 
but the Latin when he indulges in his compliments, and 
the Oriental when he proclaims his unworthiness still 
retain their sense of proportion, and no doubt their humour 
is tickled by the extravagance in which they indulge 
for the entertainment of a foreigner. The American, 
on the other hand, takes his exaggerations seriously, 
and has become so used to them that he is unable to 
see they are exaggerations ; he has lost the fine faculty 
of discrimination, and nicety of expression means no more 
to him than nuances of sound do to the person with an 
unmusical ear. 

The great social unrest in America is less among the 
working class than it is among that class which corresponds 
2 D 



402 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

in Europe with the bourgeoisie, for in America these are 
the people envious of the very rich and who think them- 
selves wronged because they have little and other men 
have much, but who are inspired by the example of 
wealth to endeavour to obtain it for themselves ; who, 
while denouncing wealth, do their utmost to possess it, 
and who are encouraged to believe that fortune may be 
theirs as well as those they envy. Nor is this the 
gambler's hope. In America prediction is worthless. 
Shrewdness counts for more in money-making than 
education, as intuitive knowledge of the growth of a 
city, so that land can be bought cheap, yields a richer 
return than a knowledge of the humanities ; audacity is a 
greater capital than a degree. What corresponds to the 
European middle class in America is found among the 
farmers. They constitute the conservative, somewhat 
stolid, more saving and niggardly element among the 
people. The farmer belongs distinctly to his class. He 
regards with disfavour political or economic experiments 
because he fears they will be more likely to affect his 
pocket than to benefit him. His occupation makes him 
careful and saving, and as he sees and handles less money 
than any other class, money becomes a more important 
thing to him. Unlike the city man, he is seldom brought 
in contact with extravagance and luxury, therefore a 
simple life seems natural. Unlike the urbanite, whether 
working-man, clerk or shopkeeper, he has practically no 
chance to make a fortune by a lucky cottp. His crops may 
be better one year than another or bring him larger prices 
and make him more comfortable, but his faculties have 
not been sharpened to improve a machine and sell the 
patent, he has no opportunities to see where a small 
investment would bring a tenfold or a hundredfold return. 
Often an unconscious instinct is more valuable than a 
carefully reasoned conclusion. Time and again American 
politicians, in the uncertainty of a political campaign, 



A NATION WITHOUT A MIDDLE CLASS 403 

have expressed anxiety about the "farmer vote," and 
they have been heard to say that if they knew how the 
farmers were going to vote they would feel sure about 
the result. I do not believe that the American politician 
is psychologist enough to know that middle-class stability 
is found among the farmers, but by a rule of thumb the 
politician does know that what will commend itself to 
the farmer will be approved by men of conservative thought 
in the cities, so that he has a basis reliable enough on 
which to make his calculations. The English politician 
thinks of the "man in the street" when he goes to the 
country ; the Frenchman, the bourgeoisie— the farmer in 
America is their antitype. 

Still, in the sense of looking up to a class inexorably 
higher than its own life, the American farmer class is as 
far from representing a " middle class " as any other social 
group in America. 

We are apt to vaunt this independence from caste and 
the fact that, while in other countries there has been a 
slavish persistence of social distinction, even with increasing 
political equality, America has unceasingly inoculated 
with the " free and equal " spirit, even at the immigrant 
station. 

Yet the middle class that recognizes itself as such, 
that is content to belong to its own class, is, at times, 
a safeguard and bulwark of a nation. Its limitation of 
intellect ; its deficiency of enterprise and, to a certain 
extent, courage — the courage of reckless adventure— make 
it a conservative force, satisfied with a commonplace, 
eventless existence, clinging tenaciously to what it has 
and regarding progress with suspicion ; reluctant to adopt 
anything that is new. It is because there is a great middle 
class in England that the English have the reputation of 
being conservative and are slow to make experiments. 

The absence, the impossibility of a middle-class feeling 
in America leaves our masses in flux, liable to the white heat 



404 HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 

of hysteria ; to a boiling over, to constant action, to constant 
readjustment, to ambitious invasion of new environment. It 
explains so much of American custom and the American 
point of view that I have ventured upon this elaboration 
of a negative quality, though I have been obliged in other 
chapters when tracing analogies between the two countries 
to adopt the Yankee native's distinction and refer to our 
great class of " folks middlin' well fixed " as a " middle 
class." But really democracy, that was the triumph of 
the people, destroyed the middle class. 

A foreign visitor has recently summed up his general 
impressions as follows — 

"In Europe there is too great a tendency to create an 
imaginary America, attributing to it vices and virtues 
which it has not ; exaggerating everything to fantastic 
and untrue proportion — its materialism, its haste, its 
luxury, its spirit of innovation, its inclination to the 
gigantic, its energy. A foreigner who comes here with- 
out prejudice has little trouble in reducing all these things 
to more human and real proportions, and in convincing 
himself that America is neither the inferno described by 
its European enemies nor the paradise described by its 
admirers, but just a very interesting bit of the earth, 
where, in spite of mistakes and imperfections, great things 
are being and will continue to be accomplished, and where 
also all the miseries and all the precious things of modern 
civilization may be found." 

Perhaps the absence of a hedgerow about a middle 
class is at once the basis of some of our faults but also 
the root of some of our highest qualities. 



INDEX 



Abandoned farms, 315, 316 

Actors, American attitude toward. 
180 

Advertising, department of, in shops, 
149, 150 

Agricultural colleges, 68, 69 

Alley shacks, 361 

** All modern improvements," 363 

*' All sorts of persons," 321 

American, affectation, 190 ; arrange- 
ment of shops, 159 ; carnival 
spirit, 322 ; charges against things, 
13, 95, 246,323 ; child, 14, 15, 16 ; 
composite character of nation, 3; 
face, II, 12; fiction, 115; home 
life, 14 ; hospitality, 255 ; hostesses, 
257, 261 ; humour, 175, 227- 
231 inclusive ; infant, 33, 34 ; 
joke, 227-231 inclusive, 349 ; 
manners, 1 7 - 24 inclusive ; 
marriage, 16 ; materialism, 19 ; 
men, 23 ; millionaires, 17, 386- 
389 inclusive, 391, 394 ; mongrel 
race, 13 ; mothers, 31 ; naivete, 
18, 19 ; newspapers 232, 233 ; 
parents' worship of daughter, 33, 
75 ; schools, 48-52 inclusive ; 
school children, 49 ; shops, 159 ; 
stage, 219; woman, 12, 24, loi 
et seq.\ workingman, 128; young 
person, undisciplined, 75 

Americanism and Briticisms, 239- 
242 inclusive 

American women and the shops, 147 

Apartments, 362, 364, 365 

Apartment hotels, 369 ; sociological 
aspect of, 369-372 inclusive ; types 
occupying, 370, 371 

Architecture, and manners, 377 ; 
of shops, 158 ; provincial, 372 ; 
styles in, 373 ; utilitarian, 351 

2 D 2 



Arenas, roofed, in large cities, 183 
Aristocracy, mechanism of, absent, 

383 ; of wealth, 384 
Army officers, 254 
Athletics, specialization in, 175, 176 
Atlantic City, 321-329 inclusive ; 

Board Walk, 326 ; etiquette of, 

323 ; types, 323 
Audiences, American, 184, 185 



B 



Bachelor girls, 84, 85, 87 

Bargains, 149 

Bar Harbour, 336, 337 

Beauty, English and American, 154 

Bible in public schools, 64 

" Big shows," the, 183, 184 

"Block houses," the, of cities, 366 

Blouses and underlinens, 155 

Boarding school types, 73 

Boston, 299 

Boys, American and English, 26, 29, 

54, 55 
Breakfast, American, the, 139 
British ambassador, 173, 321 
Budgets of housekeeping expendi- 
tures, 133, 135 
Budget of family of professional man, 

144, 145 
Budget of labourer's living, 130 



Cabinet members, expenses of, 207 
Cabs, 143 

California in winter, 338 
Calling in Washington, 195 
Cannon, Hon. Joseph G., 20 
Capital, a, made to order, 194 
Celebrations, uniformity of, 13 



4o6 



HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



Charitable enterprises, 97 

Chicago, department stores of, 147, 
160, 161 

Chicago University, 65, 390 

Child, American, the, 14, 15, 16, 
25 et seq. ; alertness, 35 ; anecdotes 
of, 26, 28, 35, 36, 37, 39, .43, 
104 ; at school, 48-52 inclusive ; 
at theatre, 36 ; costume of, 31, 32 ; 
entertainment of, 36, 38 ; estimate 
of, abroad, 25 ; manners of, 29 ; 
of the tenements, 39 ; of the 
wealthy, 38, 39 ; Southern, 44, 

45 
Children's Theatre, the, 40 
Chinatown, 6, 7 
Chinese in California, 8, 9 
Chivalry of boyhood, 29 
Children's National Bureau, 41 
Christmas, 36 
Circus, the, 181 
Cities, foreign, within American 

cities, 4 
Civic welfare, birth of, 358 
Civil service, 212 
Civil war, unifying effect of, 3 
Class-consciousness, absence of, 247, 

248, 379 
Classes in America, 379, 380 
Classics in public schools, 53 
Coal, cost of, 138 
Co-education, in schools, 52 ; in 

colleges, 65, 66, 67 
Colleges in the United States, 58 
Colleges, women's, the, 106, 107, 

no, III 

" Colonial" houses, 374, 375 
Comfort in American homes, 375 
Congressional Circle, 197 d seq. 
Congressmen's wives, 196-204 in- 
clusive 
Congress of nations m America, 9 
Connecticut Valley, the, 301 
Consumer's League, the, 167 
Cosmopolitan capital, the, 192 
Cost of living, 129 
Cost of vacations, 346 
Cotillons, 93, 94 
Crime in America, 16 



Debut, the, 92, 93 
Debutante, the, education, 



92 



Washington, 94 ; launching, 93 ; 

place in society, 94 
Democratic simplicity, 381 
Department employees, 212-215 

inclusive 
Descent, value of, in United States, 

383 
Desserts, English and American, 

139 
Dialects in United States, 241, 242 
Diet of foreign workman, 129 
Dinner-giving, 249 
Diplomatic Corps, 209 
Dress, cost of, in England and 

America, 151, 152 
Drink and the working-class, 131 



Early days in West, 287-289 in- 
clusive 

Easterner's idea of West, i, 274-278 
inclusive 

East Side of New York, 52, 354 ; 
working-girls of, 89 

Economies of West, 294, 295 

Educated American drudge, 106, 
107, 108, 109 

Education, higher, a phase of, 109, 
no 

Employees in stores, 165 

Employer's attitude, 165, 166 

English and American common 
stock, variation of, 387 

Entertainments, scale of, 248 



Facial type, 1 1 

Fallacy of wealth rule in United 

States, 384, 385 
Farmer class, 402 
Farmer's wife, 125, 126 
Farming in East and West, 286 
Feminine wage-earners, 85, 86 
Fiction, American, 115 
Fisher-folk of New England, 308- 

315 inclusive 
Flagler, Henry M., 339 
Flats, 362, 363 
Florida, 338 
Flowers, table decorations, 143 



INDEX 



407 



Food, comparative estimates, 138- 

141 inclusive 
Foreign population in United States, 

3 
Foreign critics, our, 16, 17, 18; 

Atlantic City, 323 ; hospitality, 

246, 247 J of young person, 95, 

99, 100 
Fortunes, division of, 396 
Furnished houses at capital, 210 



Gas, cost of, 138 

General store, i6i 

Germans in United States, 9, 13 

Girl, American, the, as home-maker, 
81 ; beauty of, 98, 99 ; college 
type, 82 ; education of, 79, 80, 
91 ; idea of marriage, 81, 82 ; in 
philanthropy, 96 ; physique 98 ; 
pre-eminence of, 77 ; reading, 79 ; 
"settlement" work of, 82, 83; 
walk, 99 

Greengrocer, 165 

Grill-rooms, 185, 186 

Grocery department in stores, 165 



H 



Harvard University, the Cosmo- 
politan Club of, 62 

" Hazing," 55 

Heating of houses, 137 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on New 
England, 298 

Home life of middle class, 14, 24, 

30 

Horse show, the, 179 

Hospitality, 252, 253, 255 ; in 
restaurants, 259, 260 ; sectional 
gastronomy, 264 ; Southern, 262, 
263 ; week-end stays, 2$6 

Hostesses, 257, 261 

Hotels, advertising methods of, 268 ; 
equipment of, 267-271 inclusive ; 
living in Washington, 203 ; London 
and New York, 264-266 inclusive ; 
tariff of, 267 

House-keeping expenditures, 127 

Humour, American, 175, 349 ; in 
House of Representatives, 228- 
230 inclusive ; English and Ameri- 



can, 227 ; in speech-making, 228 ; 
newspaper paragrapher, 231 ; sense 
of proportion lacking, 401 ; on 
stage, 223 



Immigration, 2, 3, 4, 9, 13, 14; 

commission, 11 ; and marriage, 

12 
Immigrants in West, 281 
Immigrant to Governor, from, 385 
Irish in America, 9 



Jews, 5 



K 



Kitchen utensils, cost of, 138 



Landlord, American, the, 364 
Leland-Stanford Junior University, 

Lincoln, Abraham, 20 
"Little Italy," 4, 5, 6 
'* Long Acre Square," 10 
Luxury in the United States, 141 
Lyons (British ambassador), 20 



M 



Madison Square Garden, 177-183 

inclusive 
Mail order houses, 161, 162, 163 
Mammoth Springs Hotel, i 
" Mammies," Southern, 44, 45 
Man, the American, 23 ; at Florida 

resorts, 343 ; business, 23 ; as 

father, 345 ; in society, 252, 253 
Manners, American, 17-24 inclusive ; 

in Washington, 209 
Marriages, 16; delayed by interests, 

97; for love, 11 5-1 19 inclusive; 

in Washington, 211; Southern, 

Materialism, 19 



4o8 



HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



Mechanic's income, the, 137 

Menu, typical, 250 

Metropolitan Opera House, 189 

Miami, 345 

Middle-class playground, the, 325 

Middle-class American woman, 122, 
123 

Middle class, a, interpretation of, 
379 ; value of, 403 

Military Academies, 57 

Millionaires, American, 1 7 ; 386- 
389 inclusive ; European and 
American, 389 ; limitation in 
power of, 391 ; our humble, 387, 
392, 393 J workshop, 394 

*' Millionaire Senators," 206 

Miners, wages and living, 290 

Mines, 289 

Mitchell, John, labour leader, 392 

Monotony of New York houses, 365, 
366 

Morgan, J, Pierpont, 392 

Mothers' Congress, 41 

Mother, the American, 33, 34 

N 

Nation of villagers, 292 

Navy, poor man's profession, 383 

Negro, the, and the theatre, 225 ; 
caste with, 217, 218 ; children, 
46, 47; in Washington, 216; 
minstrels, 188 

New England, abandoned farms, 
315, 316; agriculture in, 316; 
college towns, 302-305 inclusive ; 
fisher- folk, 308-315 inclusive; 
housekeepers, 301 ; intellectualism, 
302-305 inclusive; inter-marriage, 
309-317 inclusive ; isolation in, 
317; "pie belt," 302; '*poor 
white," 315; republican aristoc- 
racy in, 300; rural, 315; senti- 
ment of, 299 ; small colleges, 302- 
305 inclusive ; women, 305-308 
inclusive 

Newport, 329-336 inclusive ; athle- 
tics, 334 ; casino, 333 ; enter- 
tainments, 332; villas, 335; 
Westerner's view of, 336 

Newspapers, English and American, 
232 ; foreign news in, 234 ; rates, 
233 ; salaries, 233 ; social column, 
234> 235 ; Sunday editions, 238, 
239 



Noise of American cities, 353 
Nouveaux riches^ the, 209, 210 
Nursery, absence of, 28 



Office-holders' salaries, 207 
Open street-cars, 215 
Opera, 188, 189 



Palm Beach, 340 

Patriotic societies, 381, 382 

Paupers, native and foreign born, 16, 

357 

Pavements as playgrounds, 27 
Pioneer mother, 11, 12 
Playgrounds, public, 44 
Play, meaning of, in United States, 

173, 174 
Poise, absence of, in American 

women, 108 
Political career and wealth, 207 
Politics in the West, 292, 293 
Poor, the, 357, 358 
" Poor whites," 46 
" Prairie schooner," 278 
Preparatory schools, 53 
Professors' salaries, 62, 69 
Psychology of Westerner, 291, 295, 

296, 297 
Psychology of play, 176, 177 
Puritan types in New England, 302- 

320 inclusive 



R 



Races, variety of, in United States, 

2 et seq. 
Railroads through West, 279, 280 
Ranches, 281-283 inclusive; ranch 

houses, 284; ranch women, 285 
Ready-to-wear clothing, 152, 153 
Representatives, 196 ; living ex- 
penses of, in Washington, 200- 
202 inclusive 
Republicanism, 22 
Respect for achievement, 392 
Restaurants, 257, 258; charges, 268, 
269 ; entertaining in, 259, 260 ; in 
shops, 158, 159 ; foreign, 258, 259 



INDEX 



409 



Riverside Drive, 376 
Rockefeller, John D., 65, 391 
Roof -gar dens, 187 
Rothschild, Baron, :390 
Royal Poinciana, 339 
Rural, New England, 315 



St. Augustine, 340 

Scale of income, 128 

School children, 49 

Schools, public, 48-52 inclusive 

Sea-going railroad, 341 

Sectarian colleges, 64 

Sectionalism of speech, 276 

Self-resource, lack of, in United 

States, 177 
Senate as " Rich men's club," 388 
Senator's salary, a, 204, 205 
Senator's wife, duties of, 205 
Servants, in the United States, 256, 

257 ; in Washington, 202 
Settlement work, 40, 41 ; young 

women engaged in, 82, 83 
Shop-girls, 87, 88, 89, 165-172 

inclusive; wages, 168, 169; homes 

of, 168, 169 
Shopping, habit of, 148 ; as national 

characteristic, 164 
Sky-line of New York, 353 
Skyscrapers, occupants of, 354 
Society, American, 21 ; English and 

American, 261 ; in Washington, 

193; people of New York, 270; 

New York, via Newport, 332 ; 

young women in, 92 
Sons of rich men, 397 
South-western resorts, 338 
Speaker of the House, 208 
Spirit of play, 173-176 inclusive 
Slums, conditions in, 357 ; foreign 

faces of, 360 J of Washington, 

361, 362 
Sportsman's show, 180 
South, children in, 44, 45 ; marriage 

statistics of, 125 
Southern man, the, 123, 124 
Southern woman, the, 123, 124, 

125 

Stage, American, the, 219; pro- 
vincialism of, 220-222 inclusive ; 
traditions of, 220, 221 

Standard of living, 129 



Standard of merit in United States, 
383; ability, 392-394 inclusive; 
achievement, 392 

Stanford, Senator, 65 

State universities, co-education in, 
66, 67 ; faculty, 69 ; presidents, 
69 ; students from, i ; types of 
students, 68 ; women students, 70 ; 
university towns, 67 

Steam-heated state, a, 342 

Stock in American and English 
shops, 153 

Student life, 59 

Suburban housing, 372 

Suffrage, women's, apathy toward, 
112, 113 

Summer hotels, 346, 347 

Summer in Washington, 215 

Summer migrations, 345, 346 

Summer resorts summarized, 327 

Sunday schools, 35 

" Sundowners," 213, 214 

Sunlight and skyscrapers, 353, 354 



Taste, dramatic, of public, 222, 223, 
224 

Teachers' salaries, 50 

Tea habit in America, 270 

Temperament, English and American, 
251-255 inclusive, 387 

Tenements, children of, 39 ; 
" double-decker," 355 ; Tene- 
ment House Committee, 359 ; 
occupants of, 356 ; of New York, 
355 ; rents, 356 

Theatres, children attending, 36 

Tipping, 242, 243 

Tocqueville de, on American women, 
loi, no, 116 

Tourist "sleeper," 279, 280 

Tubercular resorts, 281, 338 

Two-family houses, 367, 368 



Universities, expenses of course in, 

61, 62 ; millionaires' sons in, 61 
Unmarried women, 97, 98 



410 



HOME LIFE IN AMERICA 



Vacation, the universal, 345 
Vaudeville, children in audience of, 

37, 187, 188, 224, 225, 226 
Vegetables in America, 141 
Vernacular of " prep " schools, 

,56,57 
Vice-President, the, 207 



W 



Walking, American distaste for, 173 ; 
of young girls, 99 

Washington, cost of living in, 201 ; 
the village, 216; and Paris, 
212 ; society reporters in, 235- 
237 inclusive 

Water rates, comparison of, 138 

Wealth and politics, 388 

Western town, 277 

Window displays, 158 

Winter playgrounds, 338-345 in- 
clusive 



Woman, the American, 13, 20, loi 
et seq. ; lack of poise, 108 ; con- 
ventionality, 114, 115; college 
type of, 106, 107, no, III ; as 
drudge, 106, 107, 108, 109 ; 
marriage for love, 115-119 in- 
clusive ; in Europe, 102, 103, 104, 
113; in business, 119, 120; in 
Western states, 292-297 inclusive ; 
sociological explanation of, 102 ; 
Southern 123, 124 ; in public life, 
112; wardrobe, 103 

Working-man, in America and 
England, 128 ; hotels, 361 ; 
wages, 245 

Work, pre-eminence of, in America, 
175; source of indulgence, 176, 
177 



Yale-Harvard sheet races, 60 
Yankee shrewdness, 319, 320 
Yellow journals, 233 
Yellowstone National Park, i, 273 



PRINTED BY 

WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 

LONDON AND BECCLESt 



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